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BENJAMIN  DISRAELI 

AX    UNCONFENTIONAL 
BIOGRAPHY 


BY 


WILFRID    MEYNELL 


WITH  FORTY  ILLUSTRATIONS,   INCLUDING 
TWO  PHOTOGRAVURE  PLATES 


NEAV    YORK 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

MCMIII 


OF  THE 


»'•</» 


"■'  H'^OH 


Copyright,  1903,  bt 
D.  APPLETON  AXD  COMPANY 


Published  7^'orrmbcr,  1903 


DEDICATION 


/A5 


TO    WILFRID   SCAWEN  BLUNT, 

OF  C RABBET  PARK,    SUSSEX, 
AND  SHEYKII  OBEYD,  CAIRO: 

COSMOPOLITAN 


Dear  Blunt, — A  dedication  is  an  author's  per- 
quisite: more  acceptable  than  even  the  check  of  his 
spendthrift  publisher.  For  this  uncovenanted  page 
ceded  to  the  scribbler  is  his  to  cede  again;  twice 
blessed  is  he  to  receive  and  to  bestow.  Shelley,  with 
his  nosegay  to  give,  cried,  ''Oh,  to  whom?"  But 
already  his  heart  well  knew  the  destination.  I,  for 
my  part,  with  this  bunch  of  Primroses  to  give,  thrust 
it  in  quick  fancy  first  toward  this  friendly  hand, 
then  toward  that.  Indeed,  the  formida  of  dedication 
seems  ready  made:  "To  the  most  severe  of  critics" 
{as  she  is  in  all  that  concerns  Dizzy),  "but  a  Perfect 
Wife."  A  fid  there  are,  as  we  know,  names  of  other 
ladies  that  suffice  of  themselves  to  make  a  dull  page 
shine. 

Yet  among  these  I  look  in  vain  for  a  Dizzy- 


DEDICATION 

xvorshiper  so  devout  as  you:  ungrateful  they  to 
their  fastidious  admirer;  and  failing  in  that  ampler 
faculty  of  worship  allowed  them  hy  our  Sex  with 
a  generosity  suspiciously  ungrudging.  True,  the 
townsman  who  brings  to  you  his  Primroses,  risks 
bringing  you  those,  staled,  that  were  freshly  gath- 
ered in  your  own  Sussex  copses;  nor  am  I  sanguine 
enough  to  hope,  in  placing  your  name  on  the  fore- 
head of  my  book,  that  its  pages  will  tell  you  of 
Disraeli  aught  that  you  do  not  already  know,  and 
that  we  have  not  dwelt  upon  together. 

But  there  are  auguries,  for  all  that,  in  favor  of 
this  conjunction  of  his  name  and  yours.  You,  like 
him,  have  loved  the  Arab,  man  and  horse;  and  it  is 
my  faith  that  had  you  lived  of  old  in  Egypt,  you, 
vexing  the  souls  of  Pharaohs,  would  have  solaced 
and  shortened  the  captivity  of  the  Children  of  Israel 
— Disraeli's  own  fathers.  "Egypt  for  the  Egyp- 
tians" on  your  lips  had  then  meant  "Let  this  people 
go!"  And  I  recall  the  time  when,  even  in  our  Island, 
and  under  Hanoverians,  you,  a  Poet,  pursued  the 
fickle  jade  Politics,  enamored  of  her  in  England, 
in  Ireland,  in  Egypt;  enduring  sorrow  for  her  sake, 
yet  not  living  happily  with  her  ever  after.  Disraeli, 
on  the  other  hand,  jmramount  in  Parliament,  was 
hooted  from  Parnassus.  The  pleasure  of  the  antith- 
esis tempts  me  to  make  allusion  to  this  one  failure 
of  his  in  a  career  that  otherwise  reconciles,  over  the 
range  of  romance,  and  to  the  very  verge  of  miracle, 

'  vi 


DEDICATION 

faith  with  fidfilmcnt,  purpose  with  achievement,  wish 
with  accoinplishrnentj  dream  with  daily  realitij. 
Believe  me,  dear  Blunt, 

Ever  devotedly  yours  in  Dizzy, 

Wilfrid  Meynell 

Palace  Court  House,  JV., 

September^  1903. 


Vll 


PREFACE 

Disraeli  the  Man — Disraeli  as  son,  brother, 
husband,  friend — is  the  theme  of  this  book.  It  is 
an  informal  study  of  Temperament;  in  its  way,  and 
in  his  own  words,  ''A  Psychological  Romance."  A 
record  of  his  public  acts — not  here  attempted,  except 
so  far  as  those  acts  illustrate  his  personality — would 
be  nothing  short  of  a  History  of  the  reign  of  Victoria. 
Our  England  was,  indeed,  his  chess-board;  and  I  take 
for  granted  in  the  reader,  or  dispense  with  it,  an 
acquaintance  with  the  progress  and  issue  of  the  game, 
of  the  detailed  moves  of  his  pawns,  his  knights,  his 
bishops,  his  Queen  even.  What  I  have  striven  to  make 
evident  is  the  motive  that  informed  the  hand — not  the 
hand  of  an  automaton. 

Of  his  multitude  of  speeches — (hardly  one  of  them 
all  but  is  redeemed  from  the  dominant  dulness  of 
Hansard  by  some  flash  of  individuality  in  phrase  or 
thought) — I  cite  only  those  that  help  to  elucidate  his 
human  story;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  million 
words  he  contributed  to  our  Fiction  with  a  Purpose. 
With  that  Purpose  I  am  much  concerned;  hardly  at 
all  with  the  placing  of  Disraeli  as  a  ^fan  of  Letters. 
Von   Angeli,  when  he  painted  the  Minister,  said  he 

ix 


PREFACE 

neA'er  saw  his  face,  he  saw  only  a  mask;  and  Millais, 
at  the  end,  produced  a  corse.  That  seeming  mask  w^as 
indeed  an  honest  face — that  of  an  onlooker,  so  unper- 
turbed and  so  unimpassioned  that  he  never  made  a 
grimace,  and  in  public  was  seen  by  one  long  watcher 
to  smile  but  twice.  I  fail  if  the  reader  does  not  in 
these  pages  make  of  that  mask  a  familiar,  most 
friendly,  and  true  countenance;  if  that  corse  does  not 
show  animation.  Yet  the  writer  of  the  North  on  this 
Disraeli  of  the  South  must  equally  fail  in  his  effect 
who,  giving  motive  to  the  Sphinx,  does  not  leave  him 
a  Sphinx  still.  The  man  of  mystery,  the  man  who 
thought,  loved,  suffered  more  than  he  said  or  wrote 
or  looked,  must  still  remain.  If,  as  the  poet  dreams, 
a  gem  is  hard  and  fixed  in  proportion  to  the  rapidity 
of  its  "interparticled  vibration,"  so,  too,  the  immo- 
bility of  Disraeli  was  the  expression  of  a  thousand 
activities  only  too  quick,  too  varied,  to  be  caught  by 
the  casual  eye. 

The  legend  of  Disraeli  the  Adventurer  is  here  sub- 
mitted to  that  test  before  which  legends  in  general 
lapse;  and  with  the  common  result.  The  consistency, 
even  the  pertinacity,  of  his  political  aims  can  be 
traced,  as  a  Gulf  Stream,  through  changing  tides  of 
the  nation's  mutable  politics,  more  definite,  more 
cohesive  than  they,  but  of  a  different  impulse,  of  a 
more  tempered  quality;  not  always  understood  even 
when  appreciated  and  felt.  Less  of  an  Opportunist 
(which  every  English  statesman,  being  the  servant  as 
well  as  the  leader  of  public  opinion,  may  honorably 


PREFACE 

be)  than  the  many  among  his  contemporaries,  or  than 
his  great  Antagonist  most  of  all,  Disraeli  did  not 
easily  take  the  party  label.  Hence  he  had  his  early 
adventures  at  the  i)olls.  But  the  crude  representa- 
tion that  he  was  first  a  lladical  and  then  a  Tory  to 
serve  the  day's  purpose,  and  in  defiance  of  his  own 
fixed  individuality — that  rude  legend,  repeated  to  this 
very  day  in  Memoirs  that  will  carry,  if  uncorrected, 
false  weight  with  posterity  as  the  evidence  of  Dis- 
raeli's contemporaries — dies  hard.  Contributory  an- 
ecdotage,  such  as  that  about  an  early  and  implicating 
membership  of  the  Reform  Club,  has  been  traced  to 
its  sources;  and  the  base  smaller  coinage  in  daily 
currency  is  here  similarly  nailed  to  the  counter  at 
which  Disraeli  long  traded  for  the  nation — with  such 
excellent  profits,  whether  in  the  case  of  Suez  Canal 
shares,  or  a  Piero  della  Francesca  for  the  National 
Gallery. 

The  volubility  hitherto  has  been  all  on  the  side 
of  Disraeli's  less  than  friendly  critics;  and  with  the 
statement  that  he  placed  the  Crucifixion  in  the  reign 
of  Augustus,  we  are  asked  to  test  his  capacity  as 
historian;  and  are  told  that  he  once  thought  the 
Andes  the  world's  highest  mountains — and  that  is  his 
own  highest  measure  in  geography.  If  the  task  of 
freeing  Disraeli  from  some  of  the  myths  that  obscure 
his  true  story  has  fallen  to  one  who  is  not  a  con- 
ventional member  of  a  political  party,  the  result,  it 
is  hoped,  will  not  be  less  welcome  to  all  ''true  blue" 
Dizzyites,  "true  blue"  at  least  in  the  sense  in  which 

xi 


PREFACE 

K.  L.  Stevenson  proclaimed  himself  a  "true  blue" 
Meredithian. 

In  Disraeli's  case,  emphatically,  the  style  was  the 
man.  His  own  acts  have  a  close  relation  to  his  own 
words;  and,  as  he  said,  so  he  did,  them.  As  far  as 
may  be,  therefore,  I  have  left  him  to  tell  his  own  tale. 
Lucky  is  the  biographer  for  whom  Disraeli's  always 
self-revealing  novels  exist;  and  the  classic  Biography 
of  Lord  George  Bentinck;  and  the  Home  Letters, 
shrewd  as  Walpole's,  yet  unlike  his,  since  they  are 
lighted  and  warmed  at  the  constant  fires  of  a  son's 
and  a  brother's  love.  Accordingly,  too,  I  have  gath- 
ered together  Disraeli's  letters — some  published  al- 
ready in  scattered  papers  and  books,  others  here  for 
the  first  time.  To  these  are  added  the  spoken  word — 
Table-Talk — the  Table  of  Grosvenor  Gate  and  Down- 
ing Street,  of  Bradenham  and  Hughenden,  and  that  of 
the  Carlton  Club  smoking-room;  even  that  Table  of 
the  House  itself,  which  he  once  felt  relieved  to  find 
safely  separating  him  from  certain  gesticulating 
oratory  of  the  opposing  Front  Bench. 

The  book  then,  in  its  plan,  is  .  something  of  a 
novelty;  therefore,  too,  something  of  an  experiment. 
It  is  a  cross-breed — I  would  hope  a  serviceable  one — ■ 
between  biography  and  autobiography.  The  text,  as 
it  were,  is  Disraeli's,  and  mine  the  commentary;  yet 
in  the  commentary  too  shall  be  found  enough  of  Dis- 
raeli to  give  the  salt,  and  to  atone  for  any  apparent 
disproportion  of  space  occupied  by  text  and  com- 
mentary, page  for  page.    The  method  adopted  has  at 

xii 


TREFACE 

least  one  large  advantage.  It  imposes  less  strain  on 
the  reader  than  a  more  continuous  and  disquisitive 
narrative  demands.  Themes  treated  with  brevity 
have  at  least  brevity  to  commend  them,  Tliey  gain 
in  point  what  they  miss  in  amplification;  moreover, 
the  obvious  fitness  of  the  subdivisions — the  rightness 
of  the  paragraph  form  for  the  matter  under  treat- 
ment— must,  I  think,  preserve  the  friendly  reader 
from  any  feeling  that  he  is  being  fed  upon  hasty 
scraps. 

My  thanks  go  to  those  whose  friendly  help  has  at 
times  rendered  simple  for  me  an  otherwise  com- 
plicated task:  to  the  Duke  of  Rutland,  last  left  of 
the  Young  England  leaders,  for  interesting  facts 
about  the  birth  of  the  party;  to  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire, to  Lady  Betty  Balfour,  to  Lord  George  Hamil- 
ton, and  to  Sir  William  Harcourt,  for  verifications 
which  only  they  could  furnish.  For  delightful  remi- 
niscences of  Disraeli,  their  guest,  I  thank  Lady  La- 
mington  and  Constance,  Countess  De  la  Warr — the 
bearer  of  a  name  long  endeared  to  Disraeli.  A  daugh- 
ter of  that  House,  who  became,  in  succession,  Lady 
Salisbury  and  Lady  Derby,  the  step-mother  of  one  of 
Disraeli's  colleagues  in  the  Cabinet  and  the  wife  of 
another,  was  his  "admirable  hostess"'  at  Hatfield  in 
1851;  and,  "quite  a  Sackville"  in  her  "great  simplicity," 
was  his  report  of  her.  Still  farther  back,  in  1843  Dis- 
raeli was  interested  to  meet  at  Deepdene  "a  Young 
Oxonian,  full  of  Young  England,"  and  ^Nlr.  Jolin  Eve- 
lyn of  Wotton — for  it  was  he — has  favored  me  with 

xiii 


PREFACE 

his  vivid  memories  of  what  occurred  on  that  evening 
sixty  years  ago.  To  the  Kev.  James  Weller  and  Lady 
Marion  Weller,  I  am  indebted  for  the  intimate  Dis- 
raeli letter  addressed  to  Lady  Marion's  mother,  the 
Marchioness  of  Ely.  I  thank  others  among  Disraeli's 
favored  correspondents,  including  Lady  Dorothy  Ne- 
vill;  and,  as  her  husband's  representative,  Edith, 
Countess  of  Lytton.  To  others,  indeed,  I  count  my- 
self a  heavy  debtor;  to  Mr.  Eoger  Ingpen,  to  Mr. 
Henniker  Heaton,  M.P.,  and  to  Mr.  S.  T.  Meynell, 
among  the  rest.  Not  one  of  these  has,  however,  a 
shred  of  responsibility  for  the  contents  of  this  book; 
least  of  all  for  any  passages  of  it  in  which  their  own 
names  occur. 

To  the  former  biographers  of  Disraeli  the  author 
has  elsewhere  made  acknowledgments;  and  it  remains 
for  him  now  to  give  his  thanks  to  the  firms  of  pub- 
lishers to  whom  he  has  found  himself  especially,  even 
if  not  formally,  indebted — particularly  Mr.  John  Mur- 
ray, Messrs.  Longmans  &  Co.,  and  Messrs.  Constable 
&  Co.,  names  that  are  closely  associated,  in  one  way 
and  another,  with  Disraeli's  own. 


XIV 


CHRONOLOGY   OF   DISRAELI'S   LIFE 


December  21,    1804.     Born   in   London;    son    of   Isaac   D'Israeli, 

author  of  "  Curiosities  of  Literature  "  and  other  books. 
1826.    PubHshed  "Vivian  Grey,"  a  novel. 
1 8.S0.   PubHshed  "  The  Young  Duke,"  a  novel. 

1831.  Having  begun  his  career  as  a  Radical,  he  became  a  candi- 

date for  Parliament,  but  was  defeated. 

1832.  Published  "  Contarini  Fleming,"  a  novel. 

1835.  Having  become  a  Tory,  he  was  rejected  as  a  candidate  for 

Parliament  from  Taunton. 

1 836.  Published  "  Henrietta  Temple,"  a  novel. 

1837.  Elected  a  member  of  Parliament  from  Maidstone.      His  first 

speech  in  Parliament  having  been  received  with  derision, 
he  closed  abruptly  by  saying,  "  I  shall  sit  down  now^  but 
the  time  is  coming  when  you  will  hear  me." 

1  839.   Married  the  widow  of  Wyndham  Lewis. 

1 842.  Became  the  leader  of  the  "  Young  England  "  Party,  opposing 
Sir  Robert  Peel  and  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws. 

1844.    Published  "  Coningsby,"  a  novel. 

1 846.  Elected  to  Parliament  from  Buckinghamshire,  which  he  con- 
tinued to  represent  for  many  years. 

1848.  On  the  death  of  Lord  George  Bentinck  became  leader  of 
the  Protectionist  Party  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

1852.  Became  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  in  the  Conservative 

Ministry  of  Lord  Derby,  holding  the  place  for  nine 
months. 

1853.  Resumed   his   place   as   leader  of    the    Opposition    in     the 

House  of  Commons. 
1858.   Appointed  Chancellor  of  the   Exchequer  in   the  new  Con- 
servative Derby- Disraeli  Ministry. 
1  XV 


CHRONOLOGY   OF   DISRAELI'S   LIFE 

1859.  Introduced  a  bill  for  Parliamentary  Reform,  which  the 
House  of  Commons  rejected.      He  then  resigned. 

1866.  The  Electoral   Reform  Bill  of  Lord  John  Russell  and  Glad- 

stone, which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  bitterly  opposed,  having 
been  defeated,  the  Liberal  Ministers  resigned,  and  the 
Conservatives  formed  a  new  cabinet  in  which  Disraeli 
was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  He  also  became 
leader  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and,  except  Lord 
Derby,  the  Prime  Minister,  rose  to  the  most  consjncuous 
place  in  the  Ministry. 

1 867.  Became  the  principal  author  and  manager  of  the  New  Reform 

Bill,  which  extended  the  rights  of  suffrage  to  every 
householder  in  a  borough.  The  bill  became  a  law  in  this 
year  and  enfranchised  nearly  a  million  persons,  mostly 
working  men. 

1868-  Lord  Derby  having  resigned  as  Prime  Minister,  Disraeli 
succeeded  him  in  that  office.  He  opposed  Gladstone's 
resolutions  for  the  disestablishment  of  the  Irish  (Episco- 
pal) Church,  but  the  resolutions  were  adopted  by  a  ma- 
jority of  64.  Although  thus  defeated,  he  decided  not  to 
resign  until  after  the  general  elections  had  been  held, 
some  months  later.  In  those  elections  the  Liberal  Party 
secured  a  large  majority  and  Disraeli  resigned,  Glad- 
stone becoming  Prime  Minister. 

1870.   Published  "Lothair,"  a  novel. 

1873.  Chosen  Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of  Glasgow. 

1874.  Chosen    Prime    Minister    again.      He    held   the   office  until 

1880.  Among  the  incidents  of  his  Ministry  were  the 
creation  of  the  title  '"'Empress  of  India  "  for  the  Queen, 
the  establishment  of  a  "scientific  frontier"  between 
Afghanistan  and  Central  Asia,  the  acquisition  of  Cyprus, 
the  subjugation  of  the  Zulus,  and  the  "  Peace  with 
Honor"  results  of  the  Russo-Turkish  war  as  determined 
at  Berlin. 

1880.  Published  "End\Tnion,"  a  novel. 

1881.  Died  in  London,  April  19- 


XVI 


CONTENTS 


BOOK   I 
HIS  TALK  FROM   YOUTH   TO  OLD  AGE 

PAfiE 

Of  his  Birthplace 3 

Of  his  School  Days 4 

Of  Dinners 17 

Of  his  Youth 23 

Of  "  CoNTARiNi  Fleming  " 25 

Of  his  Name 32 

Of  his  Maiden  Speech 35 

Of  his  Married  Life 50 

Of  Chartism 62 

Of  his  "  Splendid  Failure  " 65 

Of  Sport  and  Politics 77 

Of  Robes  of  Office 86 

Of  "  Peace  with  Honor  " 107 

Of  Men  and  Books 119 

Of  Hughenden  Church 129 

Of  Gladstone 146 

Of  his  Amusements 151 

Of  his  Last  Days 157 


BOOK  II 

HIS  LETTERS,   BOOKS,  AND  PUBLIC  LIFE 

Early  Travels  and  III  Health 175 

Sarah  Disraeli,  his  Sister 184 

Bulwer-Lytton  as  his  Best  Friend 187 

xvii 


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LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIOXS 


FACING 

Portrait  of  Benjamin  Disraeli ProntUpuJ^'''' 

After  the  painting  by  Sir  Francis  Grant. 

Birthplace  of  Benjamin  Disraeli        ....  q 

No.  6  Aging's  Road,  Gray's  Inn,  now  22  Theobalds  Road. 

Disraeli's  School-room  at  Dr.  Cogan's       .        .  •  ^ 

Dr.  Cogan's  School  at  Walthamstow         ....  « 

Where  Disraeli  was  educated,  1817-1820. 

Xo.  6  Bloomsbury  Square ., 

The  residence  of  the  Disraeli  family,  1817-1829. 

Benjamin  Disraeli 

•        •       •        «        .      30 

From  the  portrait  by  D.  Maclise,  R.  A.,  1828. 

Benjamin  Disraeli 

26 

From  the  portrait  by  Count  D'Orsay,  183U. 

The  Author  of  "Vivian  Grey" o, 

£y  Daniel  Maclise,  R.  A.  •  •  •  . 

Portrait  of  Benjamin  Disraeli 

52 

Mary  Anne  Disraeli,  Viscountess  Beaconsfield       ....      60 

From  the  portrait  at  Hughenden  Manor. 

Mary  Anne  Disraeli,  Viscountess  Beaconsfield       ....      62 

From  the  portrait  by  A.  K  Chalon,  R.  A.,  181,0. 

Grosvenor  Gate,  now  29  Park  Lane 

Disraeli's  town  residence,  1839-1872. 

Benjamin  Disraeli  . 

94 

At  the  date  of  his  first  becoming  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 

No.  10  Downing  Street,  Whitehall 

Disraeli's  official  residence,  1S7I,-1SS0. 

The  Prime  Minister's  Room,  10  Downing  Street      .        .  .00 

Showing  Disraeli's  desk  and  chair.  '  '  '        "^ 

The  Church  at  Hughenden 

Showing  the  Disraeli  vault,  beneath  the  window  on  the  right. 

Xo.  19  CuRZON  Street,  Maykair 

The  house  which  was  taken  by  DUraeli  in  1880^ and  in  which  he  died  in  ISSl.  '      ^^^ 

xix 


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jKe-  nor-'  >s(,-    i«4»-38fe 

li^k^e  ]>'5f«*zu  ,  4"'- 

.i^Ser  a-fimln^.  try  Immmatma,  Tf96. 


LIST   OF    ILLUSTRATIOXS 

Isaac  D'Israeli 482 

From  a  drawing  by  D.  Maclise,  R.  A. 

Monument  to  Isaac  D'Isbaeli 486 

Erected  at  Hugfunden  by   Viscountess  Beaconsjield. 

Memorial  in  Hughejtden  CsrECH 510 

Erected  to  her  Favorite  Minister  by  Queen  Victoria. 


FACSIMILES 

PA€S 

Lettee  to  a  Reviewer  of  "  Sybil  " Z4S 

Letter  to  Montagv  Scott 391 

Letter  to  A.  J.  Beresford  Hope facing  454 

Lettek  to  the  Marchioxess  of  Ely 489 


xn 


BOOK  I 
HIS   TALK  FROM   YOUTH  TO  OLD  AGE 


BIRTHPLACK    Ol'    JIKX.)  AMIN     1  ilSKAl  11. 
No.  6  King's  Road,  Gray's  Inn,  now  22  Theobalds  Road. 


BOOK  I 
HIS   TALK   FROM  YOUTH   TO   OLD  AGE 

Disraeli,  asked  by  Lord  Barrington  where  he  was 
born,  replied:  "That  is  not  generally  known.  I  was 
His  born  in  the  Adelphi,  and  I  may  say  in  a 

birthplace.  library.  My  father  was  not  rich  when  he 
married.  He  took  a  suite  of  apartments  in  the 
Adelphi,  and  as  he  possessed  a  large  collection  of 
books,  all  the  rooms  were  covered  with  them,  includ- 
ing that  in  which  I  was  born." 

Disraeli  did  not  here  speak  as  an  eye-  or  ear-wit- 
ness. His  birthplace  was  No.  6  King's  Road,  Gray's 
Inn,  now  22  Theobald's  Road.  If  Lord  Barrington  ac- 
curately caught  his  words  (where  a  slight  confusion 
might  easily  occur  between  the  Adelphi  and  King's 
Road,  the  Disraelis  having  removed  from  one  to  the 
other  just  before  Benjamin's  birth),  then  Disraeli  him- 
self shared  what  is  now  known  without  any  doubt  to 
be  a  popular  delusion  about  his  birthplace.  This  un- 
lucky trip  of  Talk  comes  pat  at  the  outset  of  these  Dis- 
raeli sayings,  if  only  to  illustrate  warningly  the  du- 
biety always  attending  the  heard  and  the  recollected 
word,  where  ear  and  memory  are  constantly  detected 
traitors,  with  no  ill  intent.  "Born  in  a  library"  had 
left  mere  topography  out  of  court;  and  would,  stand- 
ing alone,  illustrate  a  particular  Disraelian  quality 
of  speech  by  which  the  narrowing  of  a  phrase  or 

3 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

boundary — here  from  a  district  to  a  room — actually 
expands  it  into  something  elemental  and  universal. 
When,  for  another  example,  he  places  the  announcing 
of  her  accession  to  Queen  Victoria  "in  a  palace  in  a 
garden,"  he  transforms  a  tiny  spot  into  something 
larger  than  Kensington  or  than  London,  giving  it  a 
more  generous  dimension,  and  charging  it  with  world- 
wide and  all-time  romance.  Disraeli,  above  all  others, 
had  the  trick  of  this  veritable  multum  in  parvo  of 
speech. 

"I  can  wait."  To  Edward  Jones,  a  schoolfellow  of 
Disraeli's  at  Mr.  Potticary's  school  at  Blackheath,  he 
Schools  and  addressed  in  boyish  good-nature  these 
schoolfellows,  yv^ords — words  which  his  life  for  some 
years  yet  was  to  illustrate.  Jones  and  Disraeli  had 
been  friends  at  home.  Jones's  father,  a  surgeon,  had 
attended  Mrs.  Isaac  Disraeli  in  the  time  of  her  trouble 
when  Sara  was  born;  and,  later,  a  consultation,  this 
time  about  schools,  and  with  Disraeli  the  Elder  as 
prescriber,  resulted  in  the  Jones  boy's  going  to  the 
Blackheath  academy  where  Ben,  aged  still  under  ten, 
was  already  numbered  among  the  pupils.  An  elder 
boy,  still  too  young  to  have  graduated  in  the  school 
of  patience,  does  not  always  welcome  the  advent  of  a 
junior  who  is  a  family  acquaintance;  but  Mr.  Potti- 
cary's new  pupil  was  in  fortune.  So  he  thought  then; 
and  still  thought  with  gratitude  long  years  after- 
ward. Grown  old  in  the  ministry  of  the  Church  of 
England,  he  looked  back  three-quarters  of  a  century 
and  wrote:  "When  my  father  took  me  to  school,  he 

4 


SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLFELLOWS 

handed  me  over  to  Ben,  as  he  always  called  him.  I 
I  looked  up  to  him  as  a  big  boy,  and  very  kind  he  was 
to  me,  making  me  sit  next  to  him  in  play-hours,  and 
amusing  me  with  stories  of  robbers  and  eaves,  illus- 
trating them  with  rough  pencil-sketches.  He  was  a 
very  rapid  reader,  was  fond  of  romances,  and  would 
often  let  me  sit  by  him  and  read  the  same  book,  good- 
naturedly  waiting  before  turning  a  leaf  till  he  knew 
I  had  reached  the  bottom  of  the  page."  "I  can  wait," 
said  the  boy  Disraeli,  to  whom  "all  things"  came,  that 
the  proverb  might  be  fulfilled. 

All  the  same,  both  here  at  Blackheath  and,  later, 
at  Dr.  Cogan's  school  at  Walthamstow,  Disraeli, 
though  he  waited,  burned.  We  get  at  his  mood  by  the 
description  of  school  life  he  gave  later  in  his  novels; 
and  it  is  precisely  because  he  has  invested  these  men 
in  miniature  with  the  passions  and  the  pangs  of  adults 
that  many  schoolboys  of  ardent  disposition  will  recog- 
nize in  him  their  truest  historian — boys  like  Heine 
who,  at  sight  of  a  certain  girl,  fell  into  a  swoon;  or 
like  Byron,  who  loved  so  consumedly  at  eight  that  he 
doubted  (as  we,  too,  may)  whether  he  was  ever  really 
in  love  again. 

"We  are  too  apt  to  believe  that  the  character  of  a 
boy  is  easily  read,"  wrote  Disraeli,  who  did  not  forget, 
as  most  men  do,  their  own  boyish  mysteriousness. 
"Tis  a  mystery  the  most  profound.  Mark  what 
blunders  parents  constantly  make  as  to  the  nature  of 
their  own  offspring,  bred,  too,  under  their  eyes  and 
displaying  every  hour  their  characteristics.  The 
schoolboy,  above  all  others,  is  not  the  simple  being  the 

5 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

world  imagines.  In  that  young  bosom  are  often  stir- 
ring passions  as  strong  as  our  own,  desires  not  less 
violent,  a  volition  not  less  supreme.  In  that  young 
bosom  what  burning  love,  what  intense  ambition, 
what  avarice,  what  lust  of  power;  envy  that  fiends 
might  emulate,  hate  that  man  might  fear." 

He  might  have  added  the  word  "cruelty"  had  he 
been  condemned  to  a  public  school,  Jew  as  he  was  by 
birth,  and  sensitive  to  all  that  affected  his  race.  His 
father's  proposal  of  Eton  for  him  was  vetoed  by  his 
mother,  who  thought  of  it,  not  very  extravagantly,  as 
a  place  where  her  Ben  would  be  burned.  As  it  was,  he 
found  in  his  very  first  school,  emotional  as  the  trial  of 
his  strength  must  have  been  to  him,  a  field  for  his  own 
powers  of  dominance. 

"The  hour  came,"  says  Contarini  Fleming,  who 
more  than  any  of  his  characters  personates  Disraeli, 
"and  I  was  placed  in  the  heart  of  a  little  and  busy 
world.  For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  was  surrounded 
by  struggling  and  excited  beings,  Joy,  hope,  sorrow, 
ambition,  craft,  courage,  wit,  dulness,  cow:ardice, 
beneficence,  awkwardness,  grace,  avarice,  generosity, 
wealth,  poverty,  beauty,  hideousness,  tyranny,  suffer- 
ing, hypocrisy,  truth,  love,  hatred,  energy,  inertness; 
these  were  all  there,  and  all  sounded  and  acted  and 
moved  about  me." 

Once  again  we  note  the  absence  of  "cruelty"  from 
the  long  inventory.  Nor  does  the  boy  find  the  novelty 
anything  but  exciting  and  developing: 

"As  I  gazed,  a  new  principle  rose  up  in  my  breast, 
and  I  perceived  only  beings  w^hom  I  was  determined 

6 


SCHOOLS    AND   SCHOOLFELLOW 

to  control.  They  came  up  to  mo  with  a  curious  glance 
of  half-suppressed  glee,  breathless  and  mocking.  They 
asked  me  (piestioiis  of  gay  nonsense  with  a  serious 
voice  and  solemn  look.  I  answered  in  their  kind.  Of 
a  sudden  I  seemed  endowed  with  new  powers  and 
blessed  with  the  gift  of  tongues.  I  spoke  to  them  with 
a  levity  which  was  quite  strange  to  me,  a  most  un- 
natural ease.  I  even,  in  my  turn,  presented  to  them 
questions  to  which  they  found  it  difficult  to  respond. 
When  they  found  that  I  was  endowed  with  a  pregnant 
and  decided  character,  their  eyes  silently  pronounced 
me  a  good  fellow.  My  companions  caught  my  unusual 
manner,  they  adopted  my  new  phrases,  they  repeatf 
my  extraordinary  apothegms." 

The  child  was  here  father  indeed  to  the  man;  for 
these  words,  written  five  years  before  he  entered 
Parliament,  may  well  do  double  duty  for  schoolboy 
and  for  member  of  Parliament  alike.  If  Waterloo 
was  won  on  the  playing-fields  of  Eton,  Disraeli 
reached  Westminster  and  the  Cabinet  by  way  of 
X    Blackheath  and  Walthamstow. 

"Everything,"  the  prophetic  tale  proceeds,  "was 
viewed  and  done  according  to  the  new  tone  I  had  in- 
troduced. A  coterie  of  the  congenial  insensibly 
formed  around  me" — a  Young  England  party  betimes 
— "and  my  example  gradually  ruled  the  choice  spirits 
of  our  world.  I  even  mingled  in  their  games,  although 
I  disliked  the  exertion,  and  in  those  in  which  the  emu- 
lation was  very  strong  I  even  excelled.  It  seemed 
that  I  was  the  soul  of  the  school." 

The  passage  is  suggestive.     Had  Disraeli  gone  to 

7 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

Eton,  would  he  there,  too,  have  controlled  his  fellows 
as  he  did  later  his  fellow-legislators — ''just  Eton  boys 
grown  heavy,"  Praed  calls  them?  If,  on  the  contrary, 
they  had  molded  him,  we  should  have  lost  Disraeli. 
A  public  school  or  a  university  has  a  level  to  which, 
if  some  rise,  others  descend;  it  may  war  against  many 
a  town  and  village  provinciality  only  to  impress  on  its 
subjects  a  provinciality  of  its  own — and  one  of  a  de- 
pressingly  monotonous  brand.  There  can  be  no  gen- 
eral rule;  for  while  the  (anti-Disraelian)  Duke  of 
Argyll  might  have  had  his  talents  ripened  and  his 
temper  sweetened  by  contact  with  equals,  mankind 
must  rejoice  that  Disraeli  developed  aloof — like  Mere- 
dith, Rossetti,  and  Kipling — who,  i^  a  crowd,  had  been 
worse  than  cabined,  crippled  even. 

Disraeli  was  at  Potticary's  school  at  Blackheath 
between  the  years  1813  and  1817.  From  1817  until 
1820  he  was  a  parlor-boarder  at  the  school  kept  at 
Walthamstow  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Cogan,  a  retired  Uni- 
tarian minister,  who  earned  some  sequestered  reputa- 
tion as  a  Greek  scholar,  and  whose  theological  views 
may  be  taken  as  some  index  of  Isaac  Disraeli's  own. 
Cogan  complained  that  he  could  never  get  the  Disraeli 
boy  to  understand  the  subjunctive;  nor  had  he  much 
patience  with  an  "if"  in  after  life.  His  schoolfellows 
were  the  children  of  prosperous  parents,  suflflciently 
undistinguished  in  a  worldly  sense  to  point  the  satiric 
allusion  in  The  Young  Duke  to  the  very  select  school 
kept  by  "the  Rev.  Dr.  Coronel,"  who  was  "so  extremely 
exclusive  in  his  system  that  it  was  reported  he  had 
once  refused  the  son  of  an  Irish  peer."  Disraeli's  com- 

8 


■'I'  o 


Pi 


SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLFELLOWS 

rades  included  E.  J.  Busk,  who  did  well  in  later  life  at 
the  Chancery  Bar;  Paget,  the  future  Metropolitan 
Police  magistrate;  the  sons  of  Baron  Gurney,  of  whom 
more  anon;  Benjamin  Travers  (who  kept  him  in  coun- 
tenance with  his  ^'Christian"  name);  Gilbert  Mac- 
murdo  and  Samuel  Solly,  F.E.S.,  known  surgeons  in 
their  day;  Sutton  Sharpe,  Q.C.;  Samuel  Sharpe,  Egyp- 
tologist; and  Daniel  Sharpe,  President  of  the  Geo- 
logical Society  and  translator  of  the  Zanthus  inscrip- 
tions; while  Richard  and  Henry  Green,  besides  being 
shipbuilders  at  Blackwall,  were,  like  so  many  of  the 
later  associates  of  Disraeli,  philanthropists.  All 
these  Benjamins,  Daniels,  and  Samuels  notwithstand- 
ing, the  school  was  not  a  Jewish  one.  At  Disraeli's 
earlier  school,  at  Blackheath,  was  a  Jew  called  Ser- 
gius;  and  he  and  Disraeli  (who  was  not  then  baptized) 
used  to  stand  back  when  the  other  boys  knelt  down  for 
prayer;  a  solitude  of  two  again  repeated  when,  once  a 
week,  a  master  attended  to  give  the  little  Jews  les- 
sons in  Hebrew\  How  far  he  w^ent  in  his  Hebrew  or  in 
his  Greek  and  Latin  there  is  testimony  at  variance. 
The  truth  is  that  he  continued  the  classics  with  a 
tutor  after  he  left  Cogan's,  and  he  loved  them  in  later 
life.  Though  he  refused  to  speak  French  at  the  Berlin 
Conference,  he  w^as  familiar  with  French  literature  to 
the  end  of  his  days. 

"By  your  account  I  have  not  changed  since  I  was 
seven  or  eight  years  old."  This  was  Disraeli's  dry 
comment  on  a  remark  made  to  him  (in  the  House  of 
Commons  when  he  took  his  seat  in  1837)  by  a  fellow- 
member — Hawes. 

9 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

"Do  you  remember,"  Hawes  asked,  "my  taking  you 
from  school  with  the  Gurneys  and  giving  you  a  dinner? 
You  are  not  altered." 

The  reply  seems  to  indicate  that  Hawes's  manner 
was  not  ingratiating — possibly  it  was  too  obviously 
meant  to  be  so.  If  Disraeli  was  willing  to  suffer  fools 
gladly,  let  them  at  least  be  fools  on  his  own  side  of 
the  House:  Hawes  was  on  the  other.  When,  there- 
fore, Hawes,  quite  in  part,  said,  "We  are  all  waiting 
for  you  to  lash  us,"  Disraeli's  comment  was:  "They  may 
wait."  If  he  did  not  hustle  others — "/  can  wait" — he 
himself  was  not  to  be  hustled — ^^Yoii  can  wait." 

As  he  became  a  parlor-boarder  at  Dr.  Cogan's  at 
the  age  of  thirteen  and  stayed  till  he  was  sixteen,  the 
figures  ("seven  or  eight")  flung  at  Hawes  were — 
well,  figures  of  speech.  Some  people  we  all  know 
whom  we,  serious,  refuse  to  treat  seriously.  We  can 
not  waste  on  them  the  accuracy  they  can  neither  hand 
on  to  others  nor  return  to  us  in  kind;  we  would  not 
concede  to  them  that  it  was  cold  though  the  mercury 
was  at  zero;  we  prefer  to  tell  them  nothing;  but  if  they 
force  our  tongue,  we  tell  them  nonsense — all  which 
prepares  a  nice  confusion  for  the  gatherer  and  re- 
porter of  sayings  credibly  repeated  from  mouth  to 
mouth.  "Before  you  can  understand  Pitt,  you  must 
understand  Shelburne,"  Disraeli  once  said;  and  before 
you  can  interpret  the  sayings  of  Disraeli  you  must  in 
some  instances  have  an  acquaintance  with  the  char- 
acter of  those  to  whom  they  were  spoken. 

One  of  these  four  Gurney  schoolfellows  became 
well  known  as  Kussell  Gurney,  Q.C.,  Eecorder  of  the 

10 


SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLFELLOWS  | 

City  of  London,  and  framer  of  that  Public  Worship 
Ivegulatiou  Bill  which  Disraeli  offended  High  Church- 
men by  sedulously  supporting.  To  his  widow  Bays- 
water  is  indebted  for  the  House  of  Rest  fronting  the  ' 
Park  from  the  burying-ground  that  holds  the  tomb 
of  Sterne.  This  lady,  who  lived  always  in  a  state  of 
religious  exaltation,  had  a  dream  when  she  lost  her 
husband.  A  bunch  of  fragrant  wallflowers  was  held 
out  to  her;  and  these  had  grown  on  the  wall  of  Death 
dividing  him  from  her — an  allegory  that  gave  her  com- 
fort. The  son  of  another  of  these  Gurney  schoolfel- 
lows was  the  Rev.  Alfred  Gurney,  a  man  of  deep  relig- 
ious feeling  and  the  author  of  hymns  that  reach  the 
rare  confines  of  Poetry. 

Other  boys  besides  Jones  w^ere  Disraeli's  friends  in 
the  holidays.     The  house  in  Bloomsbury  Square  was  I 

the  scene  of  many  juvenile  entertainments.  Mr. 
William  Archer  Shee,  son  of  Sir  Martin,  President  of 
the  Royal  Academy,  has  the  clearest  memory  of  these 
functions,  of  which  no  invitation  card  remains  to-day. 
"When  I  was  a  little  boy,  up  to  the  age  of  ten  or 
eleven,"  he  recalls,  "it  was  a  great  source  of  delight  . 

to  me  to  go,  at  each  returning  Christmas,  to  the 
juvenile  parties  which  Mrs.  Disraeli  gave,  and  I  used 
to  meet  Benjamin  on  these  occasions.    He  was  then  in  i| 

his  teens,  and  at  an  age  when  a  young  fellow  of  seven- 
teen or  eighteen  had  little  in  common  with  a  young- 
ster of  my  age.  He  took  little  notice  of  the  small  fry 
around  him,  but  walked  about  and  dawdled  through 
the  quadrilles,  in  tight  pantaloons,  with  his  hands  in  | 

his  pockets,  looking  very  pale,  bored,  and  dissatisfied, 

11 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

and  evidently  wishing  that  we  were  all  in  bed.  He 
looked  like  Gulliver  among  the  Liliputians,  suffering 
from  chronic  dyspepsia." 

These  characteristic  impressions  of  a  younger  boy, 
rather  interpreted  by  the  bias  of  after-life,  may  be 
supplemented  by  a  few  extracts  from  a  letter  ad- 
dressed to  me  at  random,  after  reading  a  newspaper 
article,  by  a  lady  who  knew  the  Disraelis  in  the 
Bloomsbury  Square  era: 

"In  the  year  1828,  when  I  was  seventeen  years  of 
age,  I  became  personally  acquainted  with  Maclise,  not 
much  my  senior.  My  family  was  intimate  with  the  Dis- 
raelis; and  it  was  through  them  that  we  knew  Maclise. 
They  had  told  us  of  a  young  artist  who  had  lately 
come  from  Ireland,  and  who  drew  charmingly.  .  .  . 
You  say,  'Lord  Beaconsfield  put  all  his  hopes  in  sis- 
ters.' And  no  wonder,  with  such  a  sister  as  he  had. 
My  elder  sisters  were  about  the  same  age  as  Miss  Dis- 
raeli, and  they  were  intimate  friends,  and,  as  a  little 
boy,  Mr.  Disraeli  would  ask  me  to  dance  with  him  at 
children's  parties,  which  I  much  appreciated.  There 
was  no  old  gentleman  out  of  my  family  that  I  liked 
so  much  as  old  Mr.  Disraeli,  because  he  talked  so 
kindly  to  me;  and.  his  youngest  son,  who  died  early,  I 
also  liked.  My  father  died  an  admiral;  he  had  been 
twice  first  lieutenant  to  Captain  (afterward  Admiral) 
Burney,  brother  to  Madame  D'Arblay,  whose  friend- 
ship he  retained;  and  it  was  there  my  family,  perhaps, 
got  into  a  literary  set.  .  .  .  My  sister  used  to  tell 
an  amusing  story  of  Benjamin.  She  was  dancing  with 
him  at  his  father's  house,  and  the  subject  of  their  con- 

12 


Xo.  c.    I'.i.ooMsi'.rm'   s(^rAi{i:. 

The  rcsi<lrnc<'  .,f  iIk-   Disnicli   faiiiily.    1X17-1X29. 


CONVERSATION 

versation  was  the  novel  of  Vivian  Grey,  the  name  of 
the  author  of  which  had  been  so  carefully  suppressed, 
lie  was  very  amusing  on  the  subject,  but  made  no 
revelation.  The  next  day  it  came  out  in  the  papers 
that  he  was  the  author." 

"Oh,  my  dear  fellow,  I  can  not  really:  the  power 

of  repartee  has  deserted  me,"  was  Disraeli's  response 

when    Bulwer,    the    host    at    an    evening 
Conversation. 

party  in  1832,  asked  him  to  be  presented 
to  Mrs.  Gore. 

Society,  Disraeli  thought,  was  nothing  if  not  amus- 
ing; conversation  must  be  communication;  by  all  laws 
of  exchange  the  guest  should  give  as  well  as  take.^ 
He  could  not  satisfy,  nor  even  gratify,  his  social  in- 
stinct by  pushing  through  heated  rooms,  looking  the 
whole  world  in  the  face,  yet  owing  every  man  and 
woman  of  his  acquaintance  a  coinage  of  the  tongue. 
Disraeli  thought  stupid  people  should  stay  mostly  at 
home,  and  keep  weird  relations  about  dull  weather 
and  duller  doings — for  weird  relations.  Bulwer  knew 
his  man;  and  the  presentation  to  Mrs.  Gore,  the  be- 
ginning of  a  kind  acquaintance  between  author  and 
author,  duly  took  place,  Mrs.  Norton  and  "L.  E.  L." 
("the  very  personification  of  Brompton,  pink  satin 
dress  and  white  satin  shoes,  red  cheeks,  snub  nose,  and 
hair  a  la  *SV//>/)7jo")  looking  on.  Mrs.  Wyndham  Lewis 
also  was  there,  and  put  that  good  mark  against  him 

'  Yet  how  little  "give  and  take"  the  most  favored  society  may  yield  can 
be  patliorod  from  the  confession  of  Monekton-lNIilnes,  Lord  Houghton  :  "I  go 
ont  as  nincli  as  I  want  and  see  plenty  of  clever  and  agreeable  people;  but 
somehow  or  other  get  very  little  good  of  them." 

13 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

as  a  "silent"  man — which  must  have  well  compensated 
him  for  the  temporary  failure  of  his  "power  of  rep- 
artee." 

"Disraeli,"  Sir  William  Fraser  says,  "was  fond  of 
inserting  little  metaphors  in  his  conversation.  Dur- 
ing the  last  time  he  was  Prime  Minister,  while  a  con- 
ference of  importance  was  sitting  on  the  Continent  I 
met  him  in  Pall  Mall  close  to  the  War  Office.  It  was 
a  bitter  cold  day;  he  had  a  white  silk  pocket-handker- 
chief tied,  not  around  his  throat,  but  over  his  chin:  he 
appeared  to  be  in  the  last  stage  of  exhaustion.  He 
stopped  me;  and  after  a  few  good-natured  words 
said:  'Has  the  dove  left  the  ark?' 

"I  thought  for  a  moment  that  it  was  some  allusion 
to  the  olive-branch  of  peace,  and  replied:  'If  you  do 
not  know,  nobody  else  can.' 

"He  said  then:  'It's  a  dreadful  thing  for  the 
country.' 

"  'Oh,  you  mean  the  floods.    I  beg  your  pardon.' 

"I  felt  that  it  was  very  kind  of  him  to  stop  even 
for  a  minute  on  such  a  day;  and  said:  'We  must  not 
lose  our  Prime  Minister.' 

"He  said:  'Thank  you  for  your  kindness,'  and 
walked  on." 

"I  do  not  care  to  be  amused — I  prefer  to  be  in- 
terested." This  was  said  by  Disraeli  to  a  friend  and 
hostess  who  feared  he  had  not  been  amused  at  her 
dinner-table.  Lothair  does  the  same  tale  repeat: 
"There  are  amusing  people  who  do  not  interest,  and 
interesting  people  who  do  not  amuse,"  says  Monsignor 
Catesby — the  name  by  a  betraying  slip  of  the  pen  is 

14 


CONVERSATION 

once  written  Capel.  "What  I  like  is  an  agreeable 
person."  And  Hugo  Bohun  adds:  "My  idea  of  an 
agreeable  person  is  a  person  who  agrees  with  me." 
"Well,"  said  Miss  Arundel,  "as  long  as  a  person  can 
talk  agreeably  I  am  satisfied.  I  think  to  talk  well  a 
rare  gift — quite  as  rare  as  singing;  and  yet  you  expect 
every  one  to  be  able  to  talk,  and  very  few  to  be  able  to 
sing." 

Disraeli's  own  early  methods  as  a  talker  are  not 
easily  set  out  in  a  formula.  He  avoided  platitudes 
in  his  own  talk;  and  platitudes  about  talk  in  general 
do  not  touch  him.  The  best  description  of  him  during 
his  early  period  is  the  familiar  one  given  by  that  naif 
American  w^riter,  Willis,  whose  initials,  N.  P.,  are  not 
quite  justly  written  Namby  Pamby. 

"Disraeli,"  he  records  after  an  evening  at  Gore 
House,  when  Disraeli  was  the  author  of  Vivian  Grey 
and  in  his  thirties,  "has  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
faces  I  ever  saw.  He  is  lividly  pale,  and  but  for  the 
energy  of  his  action,  i\nd  the  strength  of  his  lungs, 
would  seem  a  victim  to  consumption.  His  eye  is  as 
black  as  Erebus,  and  has  the  most  mocking  and  lying- 
in-wait  sort  of  expression  conceivable.  His  mouth  is 
alive  with  a  kind  of  working  and  impatient  nervous- 
ness, and  when  he  has  burst  forth,  as  he  does  con- 
stantly, with  a  particularly  successful  cataract  of  ex- 
pression, it  assumes  a  curl  of  triumphant  scorn  that 
would  be  worthy  of  a  Mephistopheles.  His  hair  is  as 
extraordinary  as  his  taste  in  waistcoats.  A  thick 
heavy  mass  of  jet-black  ringlets  falls  over  his  left 
cheek  almost  to  his  collarless  stock,  whilst  on  the 

15 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

right  temple  it  is  parted  and  put  away  with  the 
smooth  carefulness  of  a  girl's.  He  talks  like  a 
race-horse  approaching  the  winning-post,  and  the 
utmost  energy  of  expression  is  flung  out  in  every 
burst." 

The  note  of  exaggeration  is  evident  in  the  "bursts" 
that  manage  to  be  "constant"  and  yet  to  burst;  in  the 
accent  laid  on  Dizzy's  partiality  for  gay  waistcoats — 
a  partialitj^  common  to  a  whole  crowd  of  persons  in 
"the  days  of  the  dandies'';  and  perhaps  also  in  the 
vigor  attributed  to  the  delivery  of  Disraeli,  which,  if 
fluent,  was  usually  deliberate.  His  talk  came  in  a  full 
stream,  especially  in  those  early  days,  when  the  talk- 
ing mood  was  on  him.  But  then,  as  ever,  it  needed  the 
mood.  Madden  says  of  this  same  Gore  House  period 
that  Disraeli,  "when  duly  excited,"  possessed  a  "com- 
mand of  language  truly  wonderful,"  and  a  "power  of 
sarcasm  unsurpassed."  These  phrases  he  follows  by 
allusions  to  the  "readiness  of  his  wit,  the  quickness  of 
his  perception,  the  grasp  of  mind  that  enabled  him  to 
seize  on  all  points  of  any  subject  under  discussion." 
When,  a  little  later,  Henry  Crabb  Robinson  met  Dis- 
raeli, he  thought  his  talk  memorable.  "Young  Dis- 
raeli," the  diarist  records  on  this  occasion,  "talked 
with  spirit  of  German  literature." 

The  sayings  of  Disraeli  in  this  book  are  not  set 
down  as  specimen  epigrams.  They  are  not  always 
either  amusing  or  in  themselves  interesting.  They 
borrow  their  interest  from  the  man  who  spoke  them, 
and  are,  for  the  most  part,  mere  bits  of  mosaic, 
nothing  when  detached,  but  necessary,  each  in  its 

16 


OF   DINNERS 

l)lace,  for  the  true  lighting  aud  shading  of  the  like- 
ness. They  are  biographical  fragments  of  the  daily 
Disraeli. 

"I  ask  only  good  people  to  dine  with  me,  because 

on  all  others  a  dinner  is  wasted."     This,  at  his  own 

table,  to  a  lady  who  gave  signals  of  dis- 

Of  Dinners. 

tress  for  further  enlightenment.  "Ah, 
but  you  would  know  that  doctrine  if  you  adored  The 
Young  Duke'' — a  novel  for  which,  rather  to  the  chagrin 
of  the  author,  she  had  expressed  her  preference. 

The  passage  under  allusion  may  very  well  be  this: 
"A  good  eater  must  be  a  good  man;  for  a  good  eater 
must  have  a  good  digestion;  and  a  good  digestion  de- 
jiends  upon  a  good  conscience."  Perhaps  society's  love 
for  ''good"  people  as  guests  has  in  this  theory  its 
edifying  genesis;  only  the  "goods"  have  got  a  little 
mixed. 

.  "To  enjoy  dinner  even  a  hungry  man  should  have 
silence,  solitude,  and  a  subdued  light.  The  principal 
cause  of  the  modern  disorder  of  dyspepsia,  prevalent 
among  Englishmen,  is  their  irrational  habit  of  inter- 
fering with  the  process  of  digestion  by  torturing  at- 
tempts at  repartee,  and  by  racking  their  brain  at  a 
moment  when  it  should  be  calm,  to  remind  themselves 
of  some  anecdote  so  appropriate  that  they  have  for- 
gotten it.  It  has  been  supposed  that  the  presence  of 
women  at  our  banquets  has  occasioned  this  inoppor- 
tune desire  to  shine,  and  an  argument  has  been 
founded  on  this  circumstance  in  favor  of  their  exclu- 
sion. Yet  at  men's  dinners,  where  there  is  no  excuse 
3  17 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

for  anything  of  the  kind,  this  fatal  habit  still  prevails; 
and  individuals  are  found  who  from  soup  to  coffee 
pour  forth  garrulous  secret  history  with  which  every 
one  is  acquainted,  and  never  say  a  single  thing  which 
is  at  once  new  and  true." 

This  was  a  favorite  topic  with  Disraeli  in  his 
earlier  life;  and  oral  traditions  are  here  collated  with 
a  familiar  and  corresponding  written  passage. 

Five  months  after  his  marriage  he  gave  at 
Grosvenor  Gate  his  "first  male  dinner-party,"  and  it 
"went  off  capitally" — naturally  enough,  with  Lynd- 
hurst,  Strangford,  Powerscourt,  Ossulston,  D'Orsay, 
Sir  R.  Grant,  and  Bulwer  as  guests,  four  of  whom 
were  exceptional  talkers,  while  Disraeli,  always  a  per- 
fect host,  came  to  table  with  the  zest  of  one  new  at  the 
work.  Disraeli  loved  these  feasts.  They  were,  more- 
over, in  some  sort  preliminaries  to  those  Parliamen- 
tary dinners  that  were — he  knew  it  well — to  come. 
Peel  might  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  to-day's  importunity; 
but  the  "sweets  of  office"  were  served  up  on  that  table 
at  Grosvenor  Gate  all  the  same.  Within  a  month  of 
the  date  of  this  first  male  dinner-party  he  had  bidden 
sixty  members  of  Parliament  to  his  board:  forty  came. 
He  picked  his  men  as  the  best;  and  only  one  out  of 
every  three  could  not  or  would  not  take  his  salt.  How 
much  he  exerted  himself  during  this  table-land  cam- 
paign may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that  dull  men  bright- 
ened and  pompous  ones  thawed — he  had  gaiety  and 
nature  enough  for  two. 

"The  Duke  of  Bucks  has  dined  with  me,"  he  writes 
in  easy  triumph  to  his  Bucks  home;  "he  was  really 

18 


OF   DINNERS 

quite  gay,  and  seemed  delighted  with  everything, 
which  with  him  is  very  rare,  as  society  bores  him." 

A  little  later,  in  a  contrary  but  more  abiding  mood, 
and  when  perhaps  the  strain  and  stimulus  of  the 
society  of  women  had  been  mitigated  for  him,  though 
never  wholly  remitted,  Disraeli  said,  after  a  long  Par- 
liamentary banquet:  "There  are  many  dismal  things 
in  middle  life,  and  a  dinner  of  only  men  is  among 
them."  His  general  attitude  as  a  visitor  to  friends' 
houses  may  be  focused  in  the  following  sentence  oc- 
curring in  a  letter  to  his  sister,  February,  1834: 
"Henry  Manners-Sutton,  who  had  come  over  from 
Mistley  Hall,  asked  me  to  return  with  him;  but  as 
Lady  Manners  was  not  there,  I  saw  no  fun,  and  re- 
fused." 

He  who  had  written  of  London  dinners  as  "empty, 
artificial  nothings,"  as  "dull  farces,"  and  had  declared 
the  usual  company  to  be  a  "congeries  of  individuals 
without  sympathy,"  took  all  trouble  to  avoid,  in  his 
own  banquets,  the  ills  which  had  vexed  his  spirit,  all 
his  life,  in  the  banquets  of  others.  A  host  can  not  al- 
ways count  on  the  spirits  of  his  guests,  nor  even  on 
the  triumphs  of  his  cook;  but  Disraeli  was  able,  after 
some  of  these  attempts  of  his  own,  to  reflect,  with 
Coningsby:  "A  little  dinner — not  more  than  the  Muses 
■ — with  all  the  guests  clever  and  some  pretty,  offers 
human  life  and  human  nature  under  very  favorable 
circumstances." 

During  his  brief  tenancy  of  19  Curzon  Street — a 
street  close  on  that  quarter  of  chefs  whom  he  rather 
endearingly  described  in  Tancrcd — Lord  Beaconsfield 

19 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

gave  only  one  dinner-party — his  last.  It  was  not  of 
men  only — it  had  the  Season's  beauty  as  well  as  its 
wit.  The  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Sutherland  were 
there;  Lord  Granville  (who  was  soon  to  pass  upon 
the  departed  Lord  Beaconsfleld  the  best  and  truest 
appreciation,  whether  from  political  friend  or  foe) 
and  Lady  Granville;  Lord  and  Lady  Spencer  (none 
of  these  on  his  own  side  of  the  House  of  Lords: 
"Turtle  makes  all  men  brothers,"  Disraeli  once  said); 
Lord  and  Lady  Cadogan;  Lord  Bradford;  Lady  Ches- 
terfield; Georgiana  Lady  Dudley  and  Gladys  Lady 
Lonsdale;  Lord  Barrington,  his  attached  secretary, 
and  Lady  Barrington;  Lord  Granby,  the  son  of  the 
oldest  surviving  of  his  friends;  Lord  Leighton,  whose 
guest  he  had  recently  been  at  the  Royal  Academy;  and 
Mr.  Alfred  de  Rothschild. 

That  last  name,  the  name  less  of  an  individual  than 
of  a  family,  almost  of  a  race,  can  not  be  passed  over 
by  the  Disraeli  annalist  with  a  bare  mention. 

Though  the  Rothschilds  were  a  Liberal  family  in 
the  heyday  of  the  great  Disraeli-Gladstone  rivalry, 
the  personal  intimacy  between  the  Tory  leader  and 
these  money  kings  of  his  own  race  was  of  long  stand- 
ing. Seeing  that  Sidonia  stood  as  a  type  of  them  in 
Coningshy,  it  is  rather  curious  to  note  that  Disraeli 
suspected  an  author  whom  he  did  not  love — Thack- 
eray— of  having  an  eye  on  them  for  "copy."  The 
occasion  was  that  of  a  banquet  at  Sir  Anthony 
Rothschild's,  given  in  honor  of  the  wedding  of  a 
brother-in-law,  Montefiore,  with  a  daughter  of  Baron 
de  Goldsmid.    Dizzy  did  not  go  to  it — he  was  a  tied- 

20 


]'h,.ln,jnfj,h  Inj  .1 .  /'.  St.n-lni.j.   //i,/h    W  ,/r,,,„h,  . 

i'.i;.\.iAMi.\    I)1shai:li. 

Fniin   111.'   pnrtrait    l,v    D.    .N[acli-c,    R.A.,    1.S28. 


OF   DINNERS 

down  politician  in  1850 — but  his  wife  did.  "The 
Hebrew  aristocracy,"  he  reported  at  second  hand,  "as- 
sembled in  great  force  and  numbers,  mitigated  by  the 
Dowager  of  Morley,  Charles  Villiers,  Abel  Smiths,  and 
Thackeray.  I  think  he  will  sketch  them  in  the  last 
number  of  Pendennisy  It  was  from  the  host  of  that 
banquet,  Sir  Anthony  Kothschild,  that  the  first  Jew- 
ish baronetcy  descended  to  his  nephew,  later  Lord 
Kothschild.  Bound  the  Rothschilds,  in  effect,  raged 
the  storm  of  political  controversy  as  to  the  granting 
of  civic  rights  and  social  amenities  to  the  Jews.  No 
family  were  better  able  to  stand  for  a  cause  or  to  con- 
ciliate opponents,  nor,  when  the  battle  was  won  (Dis- 
raeli helping  to  win  it),  to  bear  themselves  with  better 
moderation  in  victory.  These  men,  by  large  gener- 
osities, and  by  the  leaven  of  art  and  literature  they 
have  brought  into  Lombard  Street  and  Park  Lane, 
have  more  than  repaid  the  confidence  reposed  in  them 
by  the  English  Islander.  Even  the  Duke  of  Cumber- 
land w^ould  say  so,  were  he  living  still.  Fifty  years 
ago  they  had  become  socially  a  force  that  already 
made  itself  personally  felt  in  any  public  measure 
affecting  the  status  of  their  race:  witness  a  light  al- 
lusion made  by  Disraeli  to  John,  seventh  Duke  of  Rut- 
land, after  a  division  in  which  he  had  gone  into  the 
anti-Semite  lobby.  "John  Manners  is  a  little  awk- 
ward about  the  Rothschilds,  as  he  had  dined  with 
them  on  the  preceding  Wednesday,  and  their  salt 
sticks  in  his  throat."  Dinners  still  play  their  part  in 
the  national  fortunes.  In  later  years,  the  political 
as  well  as  the  personal  ties  between  Disraeli  and  the 

21 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Rothschilds  were  drawn  closer.  It  was  with  their  co- 
operation that  he  made  his  great  political  and  com- 
mercial coup,  the  purchase  of  the  Suez  Canal  shares; 
and  when  he  had  at  last  to  relinquish  10  Down- 
ing Street  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  he  had,  as  one  of  his 
friends  put  it,  "no  home  in  town  except  in  the 
house  of  Mr.  Alfred  de  Rothschild,  who  surround- 
ed him  with  everything  that  princely  hospitality, 
tried,  warm  friendship,  and  cultivated  taste  could 
offer." 

Disraeli  to  Lord  Malmesbury,  who  had  just  seen 
the  Minister,  seated  at  table  at  the  Carlton  with  one 
of  the  Bores:  ''I  am  the  most  unlucky  man.  I  came 
here  to  meet  Colonel  Taylor,  and  the  waiter  told  me 
he  was  in  this  room;  but  Providence  has  cursed  me 
with  blindness;  so,  seeing  a  very  big  man,  whom  I 
took  for  Colonel  Taylor,  I  rushed  to  him  and  fell  into 
the  arms  of  Robert  Macaire,  who  insisted  upon  my 
dining  with  him,  made  me  drink  a  bottle  of  cham- 
pagne, which  poisons  me,  and  ended  by  borrowing 
fifty  pounds." 

To  a  hostess  who  apologized  to  him,  late  in  life, 
for  the  presence  of  a  talking-bore  at  a  small  dinner- 
party: "I  have  been  really  amused  and  rested." 

One  such  hostess  writes:  "Sometimes  it  occurred 
at  a  small  dinner-party  that  some  unimportant  per- 
son, probably  nervously  anxious  to  appear  at  his  best, 
soliloquized  most  of  the  evening.  If  the  horror- 
stricken  hostess  murmured  forth  an  excuse,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  would  smile." 


22 


"MY   MISERABLE    YOUTH" 

To  Lady  Derby,  as  they  approached  Bradenham 
after  a  walk  from  Hughendeu:  ''It  was  here  that  I 
"My  Miser-  passed  my  miserable  youth."  Lady  Derby 
able  Youth."  asking,  ''Why  miserable?"  Disraeli  re- 
plied: "I  was  devoured  by  ambition  I  did  not  see  any 
means  of  gratifying."  This  was  a  dark  mood.  In 
brighter  memories  there  was,  as  of  old,  ''no  place  like 
Bradenham." 

To  Colonel  Webster,  w^ho  said  to  Disraeli  in  his 
later  twenties,  "Take  care,  my  good  fellow;  I  lost  the 
most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world  by  smoking:  it 
has  prevented  more  elopements  than  the  dread  of  a 
duel  or  Doctors'  Commons": 

"Then  you  prove  that  it  is  a  very  moral  habit." 

Perhaps  this  ludicrous  lament  of  the  Colonel's, 
with  a  further  (not  very  friendly)  lead  from  allitera- 
tion, was  responsible  for  Disraeli's  awkward  saying: 
"Tobacco  is  the  Tomb  of  Love." 

Disraeli  was  a  great  smoker  in  early  life,  begin- 
ning with  his  Eastern  tour  in  1830.  "I  have  not  only 
become  a  smoker,  but  the  greatest  smoker  in  Malta — 
I  find  it  relieves  my  head,"  he  said  when  he  was  in  his 
twenty-sixth  year.  At  Stamboul  a  few  months  later 
he  made  the  Imperial  perfumer's  shop  his  daily 
lounge  and  "never  went  to  the  Bazaar  without  smok- 
ing a  pipe  with  him";  and  from  Cairo  he  reports:  "I 
have  become  a  most  accomplished  smoker,  carrying 
that  luxurious  art  to  a  pitch  of  refinement  of  which 
Ralph  has  no  idea.  My  pipe  is  cooled  in  a  wet  silken 
bag;  my  coffee  is  boiled  with  spices;  and  I  finish 
my  last   chibouk   with  a   sherbet  of   pomegranate." 

23 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Some  of  these  pipes,  nine  feet  long,  were  sent  home 
to  Bradenham,  and  not  merely  as  ornaments.  "Tell 
Tita  to  get  my  pipes  in  order,"  Disraeli  wrote  home 
from  town  at  the  end  of  the  summer  season  of  1834, 
"as  I  look  forward  with  great  zest  to  a  batch  of 
smoking."  Two  years  later,  writing  again  from  town, 
he  says:  "I  shall  enjoy  the  day  when  I  may  come  and 
have  a  quiet  smoke  at  Bradenham,  first  embracing 
you  all  before  my  lips  are  tainted  with  the  fumes  of 
Gibel."  Nor  did  it  all  end  in  smoke;  for  during  the 
first  year  of  his  Parliamentary  life  he  said:  "  I  ascribe 
my  popularity  in  the  House  to  the  smoking-room." 
Tobacco  is  the  salvation  of  the  Treasury;  and  it  seems 
to  be  fit  enough  that  a  cigar  should  be  one  of  the 
wands  to  carry  this  magician  thither. 

To  a  friend  vexed  by  a  rainy  day:  "There  are  two 
powers  at  which  men  should  never  grumble — the 
Sun-  weather  and  their  wives." 

Worshiper.  All  the  same,  Disraeli  was  a  very  liter- 

al fine- weather  friend,  a  lover  of  Phoebus.  With  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu  he  could  say:  "My  spirits  go 
in  and  out  with  the  sun."  "As  my  great  friend  the 
sun  is  becoming  daily  less  powerful,  I  daily  grow  more 
dispirited,"  he  tells  Mrs.  Austen  during  his  trip 
abroad  to  recover  health  in  1830.  Writing  home  from 
Granada  during  that  same  year,  he  rejoices:  "You 
know  how  much  better  I  am  on  a  sunny  day  in  Eng- 
land; well,  I  have  had  two  months  of  sunny  days  in- 
finitely warmer."  Again  he  reports  progress,  "so  en- 
tirely does  my  frame  sympathize  with  this  expanding 

24 


"CONTAllINI   FLEMING" 

sun."  Nor  did  he  fear  the  August  heat  in  Spain:  "1 
dare  say  I  am  better — it  is  all  the  sun."  And  once 
more:  "It  is  all  the  sun  and  the  western  breeze." 

Though  Disraeli  had  abundant  need  for  his  philos- 
ophy in  our  abominable  winter  climate  (praised  occa- 
sionally by  those  who  escape  its  rigors),  he  had  at 
least  a  wife  who,  as  the  common  saying  goes,  quite 
fitly  to  our  theme,  brought  "sunshine  to  his  home." 
And  he  took  the  weather  without  a  grumble.  His  as- 
trakhan coat  was  his  only  demonstration  against  our 
Island's  shrewd  east  winds  and  icier  northern  gales. 

"How  delightful  it  is  to  have  an  empty  head!" 
This  must  find  a  place  among  the  many  phrases  that 
"Contarini  clamor  for  a  footnote;  failing  it,  they  go 
Fleming."  to  flood  that  well  of  falsehood  at  the  bot- 
tom of  which  Truth  welters.  The  "empty  head''  in 
which  Disraeli  rejoiced  to  his  friends  in  1832  was  a 
head  which  had  just  delivered  itself  of  England  and 
France;  or,  A  Cure  for  the  Ministerial  Gallomania  ("a 
very  John  Bull  book,"  he  called  it),  and  Contarini 
Fleming. 

This  was  the  novel  which  cost  him  most  pains  to 
compose  and  some  perturbation  at  its  christening. 
Contarini  Fleming:  A  Psychological  Autohiographij,  was 
tlie  label  of  the  four  volumes  when  first  issued  from 
Albemarle  Street  in  1832.  Contarini  Fleming;  or,  The 
Psifchological  Romance,  was  the  variant  title  to  be  met 
with  in  advertisements  before  Contarini  Fleming:  A 
Psychological  Romance  became  the  final  form.  Milman, 
who  was  Murray's  reader,  had,  in  the  first  instance, 

25 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

ODjected  to  the  use  of  the  word  Romance— "he  says 
that  nothing  should  disturb  the  reality  of  the  impres- 
sion or  make  the  common  reader  for  a  moment  sup- 
pose that  every  word  is  not  true."  The  first  edition 
appeared  anonymously.  "Who  is  the  author  of  that 
odd,  queer,  natural  and  unnatural  book,  Contarini 
Fleming  V  Alan  Cunningham  asked  of  Mr.  Dilke  at  the 
office  of  the  Athenwum.  Disraeli  made  no  Waverley 
mystery  of  the  authorship:  the  book  went  from  him 
to  his  friends  and  to  other  likely  people,  Beckford 
among  the  rest.  "How  wildly  original!  How  full  of 
intense  thought!  How  awakening!  How  delight- 
ful!" These  were  the  exclamations  with  which  the 
author  of  Vathck  began  a  letter  that  Disraeli  rather 
tamely  annotates  as  "very  courteous."  Tom  Camp- 
bell, too,  was  "delighted  with  it,"  exclaiming:  "I  shall 
review  it  myself,  and  it  shall  be  a  psychological  re- 
view"; and  in  three  months  more  Disraeli  reports: 
^^Contarini  seems  universally  liked,  but  moves  slowly. 
The  stanchest  admirer  I  have  in  London,  and  the 
most  discerning  appreciator  of  Contarini,  is  Madame 
D'Arblay."  Perhaps,  in  letters  home,  Disraeli  charac- 
teristically made  the  best  of  reports;  for  there  seems 
to  be  a  chastened  note  about  the  account  he  long  after- 
ward gave  of  the  incidents  of  Contarini's  first  appear- 
ing: 

"I  had  then"  (in  1832)  "returned  from  two  years 
of  travel  in  the  Mediterranean  regions,  and  I  pub- 
lished Contarini  Fleming  anonymously  and  in  the  midst 
of  a  revolution.  It  was  almost  still-born;  and,  having 
written  it  with  deep  thought  and  feeling,  I  was  nat- 

26 


From   tlic   |)i)rtrait    hy  ('(iiiuf    D'Orsay,    1S34. 


OF   A   RABBIT   MOUTH 

iirally  discouraged  from  further  effort.  Yet  the  youth- 
ful writer  who  mav,  like  me,  be  iuclined  to  despair, 
may  learu  also  from  my  example  not  to  be  precipitate 
iu  his  resolves.  Gradually  Contarini  Fleming  found 
sympathizing  readers;  Goethe  and  Beckford  were  im- 
pelled to  communicate  their  unsolicited  opinions  of 
this  work  to  its  anonymous  author,^  and  I  have  seen 
a  criticism  by  Heine  of  which  any  writer  might  be 
justly  proud.  Yet  all  this  does  not  prevent  me  from 
being  conscious  that  it  would  have  been  better  if  a 
subject  so  essentially  psychological  had  been  treated 
at  a  more  mature  period  of  life." 

Heine's  opinion  certainly  comes  well  up  to  the  ref- 
erence here  made  to  it.  "Modern  English  Letters," 
he  says,  "have  given  us  no  offspring  equal  to  Contarini 
Fleming,  Cast  in  our  Teutonic  mold,  it  is  neverthe- 
less one  of  the  most  original  works  ever  written:  pro- 
found, poignant,  pathetic;  its  subject  the  most  inter- 
esting, if  not  the  noblest,  imaginable — the  develop- 
ment of  a  poet;  truly  psychological;  passion  and 
mockery;  Gothic  richness,  the  fantasy  of  the  Sara- 
cens, and  yet  over  all  a  classic,  even  a  death-like,  re- 
pose." 

"There  is  one  fatal  defect  in  a  woman — a  rabbit 
mouth.     Tn  my  young  days  it  spoiled  Lady  Lincoln, 

'  Disraeli,  forty  years  later,  seems  to  forget  that  he  had  so  far  "  solicited  " 
Beckford  as  to  send  him,  or  to  cause  the  publishers  to  send  him,  a  copy  of  the 
work  :  he  remembered  only  the  salient  fact  that  he  and  Beckford  were  then 
strangers.  They  met  for  the  first  time  (.Tune,  1834)  at  the  Opera;  and  Beck- 
ford's  praises  then  overflowed  to  Isaac  Disraeli's  Persian  romance,  Mejnoun 
and  Leila. 

27 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

and  the  only  pity  is  that  Lord  Orf  ord  did  not  think  so." 
Lord  Lincoln,  afterward  sixth  Duke  of  Newcastle, 
Of  a  Rabbit  married  in  the  year  of  Eef  orm  (1832) 
Mouth.  Lady     Susan     Hamilton     Douglas,     only 

daughter  of  the  tenth  Duke  of  Hamilton,  and  grand- 
daughter of  that  great  admirer  of  Contarini  Fleming, 
Beckford,  author  of  Vathek.  Lady  Lincoln  valiantly 
bore  her  husband  five  children;  then,  in  the  August 
of  1848,  she  left  him,  on  the  plea  of  going  abroad  for 
her  health.  Soon  her  name  was  coupled  with  that 
of  Lord  Walpole,  eldest  son  of  the  Earl  of  Orf  ord; 
hence  the  abortive  mission  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  friend 
of  both  husband  and  wife,  who  found  Lord  Walpole 
and  Lady  Lincoln  living  near  Como  as  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Lawrence.  Mrs.  Lawrence  was  "not  at  home"  to  Mr. 
Gladstone,  who  returned  to  England  having  failed 
to  take  captivation  captive.  In  1849  she  had  a  son, 
christened  Horatio  Walpole;  and  she  did  not  oppose 
the  Bill  of  Divorce  which  passed  the  House  of  Lords 
in  1850.  Her.  husband.  Secretary  of  State  for  War 
during  the  Crimean  campaign,  sought  distraction  in 
politics;  but  scarce  found  in  public  affairs  compensa- 
tion for  private  sorrows.  "I  am  no  candidate  for  of- 
fice," he  says  in  an  unpublished  letter,  addressed  from 
Clumber,  October,  1856,  to  an  intimate;  "and  will  never 
again  burden  myself  with  its  obloquies  and  ingrati- 
tudes and  its  sacrifices  of  health  and  time  so  valuable 
to  my  estates  and  my  family" — the  motherless  chil- 
dren aforesaid. 

One  recalls  the  advice  given  to  another  Duke  of 
Newcastle  in  Pitt's  time — "not  to  die  for  joy  on  the 

28 


AX   UNLABELED   POLITICIAN 

Monday  uor  for  fear  on  the  Tuesday";  and  this  Duke 
ceased  in  a  brief  while  to  be  a  pessimist.  The  allu- 
sion to  "my  estates  and  my  family/'  perused  a  genera- 
tion later,  is  enough,  however,  to  make  a  pessimist 
of  Puck  himself;  for  one  of  those  sighed-over  children, 
not  born  in  love,  brought  the  estates  to  ruin,  and  an- 
other died  in  shameful  exile. 

Disraeli  made  the  acquaintance  of  Lady  Lincoln, 
then  a  young  wife,  in  the  summer  season  of  1833  at 
a  party  given  by  Madame  de  Montalembert;  and, 
a  year  later,  he  renewed  the  acquaintance  at  a 
dinner-party.  He  thought  her  "brilliant,"  and  was 
"engrossed''  by  her — notwithstanding  the  "fatal  de- 
fect." 

To  Mr.  Charles  Gore,  who  in  1832  said  that  Lord 
John  Russell  asked  after  Disraeli's  Parliamentary 
An  Unlabeled  prospects  at  Wycombe,  before  his  first 
Politician.  contest  there  as  a  Nationalist,  and 
"fished"  as  to  whether  he  would  support  the  Grey 
Administration:  "They  have  one  claim  on  my  support 
— they  need  it." 

So  long  as  Disraeli,  the  Radical-Tory,  or  Liberal- 
Conservative,  or — a  designation  he  himself  preferred 
— the  Nationalist,  made  common  cause  with  Tories 
and  Radicals  against  the  Whigs,  the  anti-Whigs  on 
both  sides  were  very  willing  to  affix  to  him  their  label. 
Lord  Lyndhurst,  knowing  him  well,  his  temperament, 
his  tastes,  his  traditions,  could  never  have  feared  that 
Lord  Durham  would  really  enrol  him.  At  the  same 
time  he  took  care  that,  so  soon  as  Disraeli  should  find 

29 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

out  for  himself  that  the  farmers  would  not  trust  them- 
selves to  a  free-lance,  a  constituency  should  be  found 
for  him,  if  he  would  but  don  the  uniform.  After  all, 
when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  a  man  who  rises  by  rule 
through  the  ranks  gets  at  last  the  thing  denied  him  in 
his  apprenticeship;  for  the  commander-in-chief  be- 
comes a  free-lance  indeed,  but  a  free-lance  with  a  fol- 
lowing. 

Greville,  in  his  Memoirs,  makes  this  entry  under 
date  December  6,  1834: 

"The  Chancellor  [Lyndhurst]  called  on  me  yester- 
day about  getting  young  Disraeli  into  Parliament 
[through  the  means  of  George  Bentinck]  for  Lynn. 
I  had  told  him  that  George  wanted  a  good  man  to 
assist  in  turning  out  William  Lennox,  and  he  sug- 
gested the  above-named  gentleman,  whom  he  called 
a  friend  of  Chandos.  His  political  principles  must, 
however,  be.in  abeyance,  for  he  said  that  Durham  was 
doing  all  he  could  to  get  him  by  the  offer  of  a  seat  and 
so  forth;  if,  therefore,  he  is  undecided  between  Chan- 
dos and  Durham,  he  must  be  a  mighty  impartial  per- 
sonage. I  don't  think  such  a  man  will  do,  though  just 
such  a  man  as  Lyndhurst  would  be  connected  with." 

Disraeli  here  seems  to  be  twisted  in  order  to  make 
a  lash  for  Lyndhurst's  back.  Greville's  ignorance  of 
Disraeli's  attitude  may  be  readily  forgiven  him;  but 
not  his  innuendo  against  the  Lord  Chancellor,  to  whom 
Disraeli,  with  general  assent,  has  ascribed  not  only 
"political  courage,  versatile  ability,  and  ripe  scholar- 
ship," but  also  "tenderness  of  disposition  and  sweet- 
ness of  temper";  at  once  a  man's  man  and  a  woman's. 

30 


THE   NAME   DISRAELI 

Let  Greville  go  by  with  the  comment  of  one  who  was 
shrewd  without  being  shrill,  a  stoic  but  not  a  cynic, 
the  twelfth  Duke  of  Somerset:  "The  impression  pro- 
duced by  C.  Greville's  Monoirs  is  that  he  was  a  sel- 
fish man  who  never  ascribed  a  good  motive  to  any 
one/- 

"I  want  to  be  Prime  Minister."  This  was  the  reply 
made  in  his  early  manhood,  after  his  first  defeat  at 
Wycombe,  to  Lord  JNIelbourne,  who  in  a  friendly  way 
asked  him  what  he  wanted  to  be.  The  statesman's  in- 
terest was  a  second-hand  and  perhaps  a  rather  bored 
one.  His  dear  friend  Mrs.  Norton  had  asked  him  to  be 
of  any  use  he  could  to  the  young  aspirant,  who  here 
as  elsewhere,  and  now  as  throughout  life,  saw  the 
hand  of  a  woman  silently  w^orking  the  machine  of 
State.  The  talk  took  place  at  Mrs.  Norton's  dinner- 
table;  and  the  Home  Secretary — as  Melbourne  then 
was — must  have  been  startled  out  of  indifference  by 
the  soaring  reply.  The  oflBce  was  one  within  his  own 
range  of  ambition — but  this  alien's!  Melbourne  was 
soon,  but  not  more  surely  than  Disraeli  later,  to 
realize  the  dream.  And  he  lived  long  enough  to  see 
Disraeli  within  reach  of  his  goal;  but  hardly  to  fore- 
see that  the  young  man  who  had  gained  Mrs.  Norton's 
good-will  would  be  the  only  minister  to  win  from 
(^ueen  Victoria,  toward  the  close  of  her  reign,  a 
warmer  personal  attachment  than  that  she  had  ac- 
corded to  him  at  its  beginning. 

"Oh,  knock  out  the  apostrophe;  it  looks  so  foreign. 
Write  my  name  in  one  word — Disraeli."     This  was 

31 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

said  by  Disraeli,  when  he  stood  for  Maidstone  in 
1837,  to  Mr.  Edward  Pickford  Hall,  the  editor  of  a 
The  Name  local  paper,  to  whom  the  candidate  dic- 
Disraeii.  tated  his  first  address. 

"Mr.  Disraeli — I  hope  I  pronounce  his  name  right," 
said  the  proposer  of  Colonel  Perronet  Thompson,  a 
few  days  later,  on  the  hustings  at  Maidstone.^  "Colo- 
nel Perronet  Thompson — I  hope  I  pronounce  his  name 
aright,"  said  Disraeli  in  his  succeeding  (in  all  ways 
succeeding)  speech.  Nor,  for  that  matter,  was  the 
pronunciation  of  the  name  found  in  after  years  to  be 
so  fixed  an  affair:  the  Maidstone  politician  had  per- 
haps more  reason  than  he  knew  for  his  sally.  The 
softened  sound  of  Israel,  incorporated  into  Disraeli, 
was  heard — rarely;  Disraeli  was  thumped  forth  rhym- 
ing, say,  with  the  name  of  his  one-time  secretary,  Daly. 
But  many  older-fashioned  people  made  up  for  this 
quickening  of  sound  by  an  undue  elongation — Disra- 
ee-li;  some  of  them  unwittingly,  some  of  them  to  un- 
derscore the  alien.  Speaker  Peel,  for  instance,  inher- 
ited the  habit  from  his  father;  and,  calling  once  on 
Mr.  Coningsby  Disra-ee-li,  surprised  Mr.  Healy  to  his 
legs.  The  same  sound  and  syllables  must  have  been 
accorded  by  the  writer  of  some  doggerel,  entitled  "Mr. 
Gladstone's  Soliloquy,"  published  in  a  Yorkshire 
paper  at  the  time  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  death.  One 
verse  may  be  preserved,  only  in  illustration: 

Full  long  I  sulk'd,  then  got  to  my  axe, 
My  trusty  axe  I  took  to  wielding  freely ; 

'  Colonel  Perronet  Thompson  (wlio  sat  for  Hull  and   Bradford)  died   a 
General,  and  eighty-six  years  of  age,  in  1869. 

32 


AT    WESTMINSTER 

And  ever  as  my  victim  bit  the  dust, 
I  only  wished  that  it  were  Disraeli. 

The  ambiguity  bad  beeu  felt  from  earliest  years: 
at  his  first  school,  the  wife  of  the  master  solved  or 
evaded  the  difficulty  by  using  ''Is  he  really?''  Apos- 
trophe or  no  apostrophe,  the  name  could  not  be  other 
than  alien  to  English  ears;  and  so  long  as  he  lived, 
Disraeli  can  not  be  said  to  have  been  entirely  forgiven 
for  it.  The  apostrophe  was  finally  dropped  by  Ben- 
jamin in  writing  his  father's  name.  It  stands  as  Dis- 
raeli, not  as  D'Israeli,  on  the  title-page  of  his  edition 
of  his  father's  works.  The  rule  of  uniformity  thus 
established  has  been  observed  in  these  pages. 

To  a  friend  who,  walking  with  him  from  the  Carl- 
ton to  the  House  of  Commons,  turned  to  descend  the 
At  West-  Duke  of  York's  steps,  Disraeli  is  reported 
minster.  j.^  have  said:    "No,  no,  not  that  way;  it's 

so  d d  dull." 

But  who  was  the  "friend"?  The  path  of  greater 
publicity  is,  on  occasion,  preferred  for  the  hindrance 
it  places  in  the  way  of  tiresome  talk.  Dull  walking 
and  dull  talking  together  tire  beyond  bearing — as  chil- 
dren, sent  out  with  preoccupied  hirelings,  early  begin 
to  know.  Obviously,  if  Disraeli  wished  to  avoid  that 
dreary  solitude  of  two,  the  road,  not  the  companion, 
had,  for  politeness  of  speech,  to  bear  the  brunt  and 

be  d d.     When  he  walked  alone,  the  Park  route 

was  the  one  most  commonly  taken. 

Disraeli  must  have  found  the  walk  "that  way"  from 
the  House  to  Pall  Mall  anything  but  "dull'' — very 
4  33 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

lively  indeed,  after  the  opening  of  her  first  Parliament 
by  Queen  Victoria.  ^'From  the  Lords  I  escaped  with 
Mahon,"  wrote  Disraeli,  "almost  at  the  hazard  of  our 
lives,  and  w^e  at  length  succeeded  in  gaining  the  Carl- 
ton, having  several  times  been  obliged  to  call  on  the 
police  and  the  military  to  protect  us  as  we  attempted 
to  break  the  line." 

When  they  reached  the  club,  their  hats  were 
crushed,  they  were  covered  with  mud,  and  in  their 
ears  echoed  the  ready  epithet  hurled  at  Disraeli  by 
the  jocular  crowd,  "Jim  Crow":  a  palpable  enough 
hit,  we  may  suppose,  to  secure  the  repeating  of  it  to 
Lady  Mahon,  whose  praises  of  the  sonnet  Disraeli  ad- 
dressed to  her  had  not  at  the  moment  exhilarated  her 
husband.  Disraeli,  let  it  be  added,  had  a  true  affection 
for  Lord  Mahon,  better  known  as  Lord  Stanhope,  the 
biographer  of  Pitt;  and  his  portrait  was  among  those 
hung  and  prized  to  the  very  last  at  Hughenden. 

Dizzy,  famous  for  his  foppery,  was  nevertheless 
nearly  kept  away  from  the  coronation  of  his  Queen 
Victoria  because  he  did  not  happen  to  possess  the 
garb  to  go  in.  Only  a  few  days  before  the  crowning, 
he  wrote  in  a  private  letter:  "I  must  give  up  going 
to  the  Coronation,  as  we  [Members  of  Parliament] 
go  in  state,  and  all  must  be  in  Court  dresses  or  uni- 
forms. As  I  have  withstood  making  a  costume  of  this 
kind  for  other  purposes,  I  will  not  make  one  now." 

With  that  deprivation  in  view  the  young  member 
for  Maidstone  had  recourse  to  philosophy — the  wise 
cheat.  "I  console  myself,"  he  says,  "with  the  convic- 
tion that  to  get  up  very  early  (eight  o'clock),  to  sit 

34 


TIIM    AITIIOR     oy    MTMAX    fil^EY." 
Hv    Daniel   Maclisc,    K.  A 


THE   MAIDEN   SPEECH 

dressed  like  a  flunky  iu  the  Abbey  for  seven  or  eight 
hours,  and  to  listen  to  a  sermon  by  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don, can  be  no  great  enjoyment." 

Dizzy,  indeed,  got  up  much  earlier  than  eight  that 
Coronation  morning.  At  half-past  two  he  got  a  Court 
suit,  and  at  once  proceeded  to  try  it  on.  His  sudden 
change  of  plan  was  due  to  the  friendly  persuasions 
(and  the  friendly  purse)  of  his  brother  Ralph.  Once 
he  had  his  Court  dress,  Dizzy  did  not  recur  to  its  like- 
ness to  the  livery  of  a  flunky.  On  the  contrary,  it  not 
only  got  him  into  the  Abbey,  but  it  gave  him  otherwise 
a  specially  personal  gratification:  "It  turned  out  that 
I  have  a  very  fine  leg,  which  I  never  knew  before."  He 
finds  that,  like  Sir  Willoughby  Patterne,  "he  has  a 
leg." 

"Failure!"  An  overpowering,  and  therefore  a  sin- 
gle, emotion  sometimes  finds  fittest  expression  in  a 
The  Maiden  single  word;  and  "Failure!"  was  Disraeli's 
Speech,  after  the  famous  breakdown  of  his  maiden 

speech.  Hardly  a  breakdown,  however.  Disraeli  did 
not  falter;  others  failed  to  listen.  As  we  look  at  it 
now,  the  failure  was  not  his,  but  theirs. 

None  the  less  did  its  influence  on  Disraeli's  career 
appear,  for  the  moment  of  chagrin,  to  be  disastrous. 
The  new  member  was  not  as  other  new  members.  He 
was  already  a  figure;  he  had  written  successful  books 
of  a  youthful  smartness  that  staid  people  always  be- 
lieve to  be  most  justly  castigated;  he  was  a  fop,  with 
a  drawing-room  reputation,  and  if  he  was  this  and  no 
more — (they  saw  before  them  the  alien  figure,  flashy 

35 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

in  its  accouterments  according  to  their  taste,  but  they 
could  not  measure  his  mind  or  judge  his  strength  of 
purpose) — then  most  righteously  was  he  humbled. 
Moreover,  he  came  to  Westminster  with  malice  pre- 
pense, as  it  were;  not  impartially  waiting  for  the  op- 
portunities that  might  there  offer  themselves,  but  hot 
for  the  combat  to  which  he  had  challenged  O'Connell. 
It  w^ould  seem,  indeed,  all  things  considered,  that  he 
courted  opposition  when,  following  O'Connell,  he  rose 
for  the  first  time  to  take  his  part  in  debate.  Before 
him,  on  the  Treasury  Bench,  where  he  would  one  day 
sit  supreme,  he  saw  Lord  John  Russell,  to  whose  lead- 
ership of  the  Whigs  he  had  pointed  in  modern  illus- 
tration of  the  ancient  worship  of  an  insect.  Lord 
Palmerston,  too,  must  have  smiled  at,  and  not  on,  the 
young  member  with  so  little  of  the  Briton  about  him, 
who  had  written  of  Palmerston  himself  as  the  Lord 
Fanny  of  Foreign  Politics.     Joseph  Hume — ready  at 

any  time  to 

Take  the  sense 
Of  the  House  on  a  saving  of  thirteen  pence, 

had  been  probed  by  Disraeli's  pen;  and  such  personal 
friends  as  Bulwer  and  Buncombe  were  ranged  among 
his  political  foes.  Mr.  O'Connor,  facile  princeps  in  a 
House  of  Commons  sketch,  reminds  us  that  Graham 
and  Macaulay  were  both  out  of  the  House  on  this 
memorable  evening.  Of  these  and  their  compeers  he 
had  said  to  his  sister  that  he  could  "floor  them  all"; 
and  now  was  the  moment  when  he  must  make  good 
his  word.  He  had  to  keep  faith  with  believing  Braden- 
ham.    That  was  the  most  anxious  work  of  all — to  jus- 

36 


THE   MAIDEN    SPEECH 

tify  himself,  and  what  his  career  had  cost,  in  the  sight 
of  his  family.  Aud  if,  by  all  his  dignities,  he  had  to 
show  the  Iveformers,  who  had  sought  him,  that  it 
would  have  been  worth  their  while  to  win  him,  he  had 
also — a  nervous  achievement  for  a  nervous  man — to 
honor  the  large  drafts  of  confidence  he  had  drawn 
upon  his  Tory  friends.  Chandos  was  there,  his  neigh- 
bor from  County  Bucks,  the  son  of  that  Marquis  of 
Carabas  he  had  sketched  in  Vivian  Grey,  and  his  backer 
at  the  Carlton — the  "friend  of  Chandos,"  Lyndhurst 
had  said  of  him  to  Greville,  when  a  seat  had  to  be  ob- 
tained quickly  lest  Lord  Durham  should  step  in  first. 
All  these  things,  and  more  than  these,  were  acute- 
ly present  to  Disraeli  when  he  rose  to  take  part  in  an 
Irish  debate  so  fiercely  conducted  that  the  Speaker 
had  already  once  threatened  to  leave  the  Chair.  And 
now%  before  the  cheers  of  the  members  for  Ireland  and 
other  friends  had  subsided  with  O'Connell's  lofty  fig- 
ure, the  oration  on  which  so  much  seemed  then  to  de- 
pend had  begun.  The  conduct  of  Sir  Francis  Burdett 
in  subscribing  to  the  Spottiswoode  Fund  for  aid- 
ing Protestant  candidates  in  Ireland  in  petitioning 
against  any  Catholic  ones  who  might  be  elected  was 
the  subject  of  a  motion  by  Mr.  Smith  O'Brien;  and 
Disraeli,  as  we  know,  w^as  allied  with  Burdett  (even 
before  Burdett  sat  on  the  Tory  side)  as  an  antagonist 
of  O'Connell.  The  speaker's  allusion  to  the  "magnifi- 
cent mendicancy"  of  the  Liberator  invited  the  volleys 
that  poured  forth  continuously  from  the  Irish  Bri- 
gade. They,  who  were  many,  matched  their  voices 
against  his,  which  was  single;  and  such  a  contest  could 

37 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

have  but  one  ending.  Victory  lay  with  the  strong 
lungs  of  the  Hibernians;  and  considering  what  the 
brute  forces  still  are  to  which  a  nominally  Christian 
civilization  makes  appeal,  one  really  can  not  be 
squeamish  with  these  Irishmen  about  their  defensive 
weapons. 

"Honorable  members  .  .  ."  he  said,  at  the  close 
of  a  constantly  interrupted  speech,  which  neverthe- 
less fills  five  and  a  half  c^inmns  of  Hansard.  "I  will 
submit.  /  would  not  act  so  toward  any  one — that  is 
all  I  can  say.  Nothing  is  so  easy  as  to  laugh.  I  really 
wish  to  place  before  the  House  our  position.  When 
we  remember  that  in  spite  of  the  support  of  the  honor- 
able and  learned  member  for  Dublin  and  his  well-dis- 
ciplined phalanx  of  patriots,  and  remember  the  ama- 
tory eclogue,  the  old  loves  and  the  new,  that  took 
place  between  the  noble  lord,  the  Tityrus  of  the  Treas- 
ury Bench,  and  the  learned  Daphne  of  Liskeard,  which 
appeared  as  a  fresh  instance  of  the  amoris  redintegratio', 
when  we  remember  that  the  noble  lord,  secure  on  the 
pedestal  of  power,  may  wield  in  the  one  hand  the  keys 
of  Peter  and — no,  Mr.  Speaker,  we  see  the  philosoph- 
ical prejudices  of  man.  I  am  not  at  all  surprised,  sir, 
at  the  reception  I  have  received.  I  have  begun  several 
times  many  things,  and  I  have  always  succeeded  at 
last.  Aye,  sir,  and  though  I  sit  down  now,  the  time 
will  come  when  you  will  hear  me." 

A  correspondent  of  the  Times,  "H.  B.  L.,"  writing 
at  the  time  of  Disraeli's  death,  says  of  his  debut  in  the 
House  of  Commons: 

"The  validity  of  O'Connell's  election  for  Dublin 

38 


THE   MAIDEN   SPEECH 

liaviiig  beeu  contested,  a  subscription  was  set  on  foot 
for  the  purpose  of  defraying  the  expenses  of  getting 
him  ousted.     To  this  Sir  Francis  Burdett,  recently 
converted  to  somewhat  Conservative  views,  had  large- 
ly contributed.     It  was  proposed  to  place  his  name 
on  the  election  committee;  but  O'Connell,  having  fair- 
ly enough  demurred  to  the  justice  of  a  declared  par- 
tizan  being  nominated  to  such  an  office,  made  a  vigor- 
ous attack  on  him,  and  in  the  course  of  his  speech  gave 
him  to  understand  that  he  considered  him  the  'great- 
est renegade  in  the  house.'    To  this  Sir  Francis  made 
answer  that  he  could  see  no  reason  why,  in  the  case 
of  attempt  being  made  to  bring  to  justice  some  'no- 
torious offender,'  a  magistrate  who  might  be  called 
on  to  assist  in  carrying  out  the  law  should  be  dis- 
qualified on  account  of  any  pecuniary  aid  he  may  have 
furnished  for  the  purpose  of  forwarding  so  desirable 
an  end.    I  need  not  say  that  the  contest  between  these 
two  Parliamentary  combatants,  each  in  a  different 
way  so  cunning  of  fence,  was  a  sight  worth  seeing. 
The  speech  which  Mr.  Disraeli  rose  to  deliver  on  that 
occasion  was,  of  course,  elaborately  prepared,  per- 
haps too  much  so.     I  recollect  it  as  containing,  here 
and  there,  passages  which  could  hardly  fail  to  pro- 
voke a  smile  should  the  slightest  nervousness  arrest 
the  power  of  unimpeded  delivery.    O'Connell  evident- 
ly saw  this.    In  an  unlucky  moment  the  speaker  said 
something    intimating    that    he    (O'Connell)    was    a 
skulker,  and  afraid  to  look  his  antagonist  in  the  face, 
or  words  to  tliat  effect,  when  up  got  the  burly  Libera- 
tor on  his  legs,  and,  advancing  from  his  seat,  stood 

39 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

bolt  upright,  looking  hard  at  his  opponent,  with  one 
hand  in  the  breast  of  his  waistcoat,  his  broad  chest 
ostentatiously  expanded,  and  his  shrewd  gray  eyes 
gleaming  with  a  sort  of  mirthful  defiance.  This  com- 
pleted in  a  short  time  the  discomfiture  which  the 
speaker's  nervousness  was  already  bringing  on  him, 
and  he  soon  sat  dow  n,  looking  very  pale,  after  having 
given  utterance  to  the  words  so  well  known  and  so 
often  referred  to  and  quoted.  By  the  bye,  I  think, 
but  will  not  confidently  aver,  that  the  sentence  in 
question  was  spoken  thus, — 'The  time  will  come  when 
you  shall  hear  me,'  the  word  'shall'  being  emphasized 
in  a  tone  somewhat  bordering  on  menace." 

That  was  a  bold  front.  Brave  men  do  not  sur- 
render needlessly;  some  brave  men  surrender  never. 
''Now,  if  any  one  accuses  me,"  cried  Ottilia  to  Prince 
Otto,  "I  get  up  and  give  it  them.  Oh,  I  defend  my- 
self. I  wouldn't  take  a  fault  at  another  person's 
hands,  no,  not  if  I  had  it  on  my  forehead."  But  in 
private,  and  we  are  still  in  private  among  attached 
friends,  it  is  otherwise.  Face  to  face  with  misfor- 
tune, the  spirit  flags;  the  unlistened-to  orator,  in  the 
Division  Lobby,  murmured  that  word  "Failure!"  to 
Chandos,  who  came  up  to  him  with  congratulations. 
"No  such  thing,"  replied  the  backer,  from  whom  such 
comfort  came  with  official  as  well  as  friendly  force. 
"You  are  quite  wrong.  I  have  just  seen  Peel,  and  I 
said  to  him:  'Tell  me  exactly  what  you  think  of  Dis- 
raeli.' Peel  replied:  'Some  of  the  party  were  dis- 
appointed and  talk  of  failure.  I  say  just  the  re- 
verse.    He  did  all  that  he  could  under  the  circum- 

40 


THE   MAIDEN    SPEECH 

stances.  I  say  anything  but  failure.  He  must  make 
his  way.' " 

A  very  different  Parliament-man  had  formed  the 
same  opinion.  This  was  Shell,  whom  Bulwer  found 
at  the  Athenaeum  in  the  midst  of — the  words  are  Dis- 
raeli's— *'a  set  of  low  Rads  (we  might  guess  them), 
abusing  me  and  exulting  in  the  discrimination  of  the 
House.  Bulwer  drew  near,  but  stood  apart.  Suddenly 
Shell  threw  down  the  paper,  and  said  in  his  shrill 
voice:  'Now,  gentlemen,  I  have  heard  all  you  have 
to  say,  and  what  is  more,  I  heard  this  same  speech  of 
Mr.  Disraeli;  and  I  tell  you  this,  that  if  ever  the  spirit 
of  oratory  w^as  in  a  man,  it  is  in  that  man;  nothing 
can  prevent  him  from  being  one  of  the  first  speakers 
in  the  House  of  Commons.'  (Great  confusion.)  Ay! 
and  I  know  something  about  that  place,  I  think;  and 
I  tell  you  what  besides,  that  if  there  had  not  been  this 
interruption,  Mr.  Disraeli  might  have  made  a  failure. 
I  don't  call  this  a  failure,  it  is  a  crush.  My  debut 
was  a  failure,  because  I  was  heard;  but  my  reception 
was  supercilious,  his  malignant.  A  debut  should  be 
dull.  The  House  wdll  not  allow  a  man  to  be  a  wit 
and  an  orator  unless  they  have  the  credit  of  finding  it 
out.    There  it  is.'  " 

At  Bulwer's  dinner-table  a  few  days  later,  Shell 
further  unburdened  himself  to  Disraeli,  whom  he  met 
then  for  the  first  time: 

"If  you  had  been  listened  to,  what  would  have 
been  the  result?  You  would  have  made  the  best 
speech  that  you  ever  would  have  made.  It  would 
have  been  received  frigidly,  and  you  would  have  de- 

41 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

spaired  of  yourself.  I  did.  As  it  is,  you  have  shown 
to  the  House  that  you  have  a  fine  organ,  that  you  have 
an  unlimited  command  of  language,  that  you  have 
courage,  temper,  and  readiness.  Now  get  rid  of  your 
genius  for  a  session.  Speak  often,  for  jou  must  not 
show  yourself  cowed,  but  speak  shortly.  Be  very 
quiet,  try  to  be  dull,  only  argue,  and  reason  imper- 
fectly, for  if  you  reason  with  precision,  they  will  think 
you  are  trying  to  be  witty.  Astonish  them  by  speak- 
ing on  subjects  of  detail.  Quote  figures,  dates,  calcu- 
lations, and  in  a  short  time  the  House  will  sigh  for 
the  wit  and  eloquence  which  they  all  know  are  in  you; 
they  will  encourage  you  to  pour  them  forth,  and 
then  you  will  have  the  ear  of  the  House  and  be  a  fa- 
vorite." 

Greatly  comforted  as  he  was  by  the  report  of 
Chandos,  and  already  beginning  to  see  that  this 
catastrophe  was  of  those  which  soften  foes,  waken 
sympathy  in  the  indifferent,  and  conciliate  rivals,  Dis- 
raeli's thoughts  now  went  to  Hughenden,  whither  the 
papers  would  carry  the  news  of  his  discomfiture.  A 
few  hours  later  found  him  writing  to  his  sister,  under 
date  of  December  8,  1837: 

"I  made  my  maiden  speech  last  night,  rising  very 
late  after  O'Connell,  but  at  the  request  of  my  party, 
and  with  the  full  sanction  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  As  I 
wish  to  give  you  an  exact  idea  of  what  occurred,  I 
state  at  once  that  my  (Jchut  was  a  failure,  so  far  that 
I  could  not  succeed  in  gaining  an  opportunity  of  say- 
ing what  I  intended;  but  the  failure  was  not  occa- 
sioned by  my  breaking  down  or  any  incompetency  on 

42 


THE    MAIDEN    SPEECH 

mj  part,  but  from  the  physical  powers  of  my  adversa- 
ries. I  can  give  you  no  idea  how  bitter,  how  factious, 
how  unfair  they  were.  It  was  like  my  first  debut  at 
Aylesbury,  and  perhaps  in  that  sense  may  be  auspi- 
cious of  ultimate  triumph  in  the  same  scene.  I  fought 
through  all  with  undaunted  pluck  and  unruffled  tem- 
per, made  occasionally  good  isolated  hits  when  there 
was  silence,  and  finished  with  spirit  when  I  found  a 
formal  display  was  effectual.  My  party  backed  me 
well,  and  no  one  with  more  zeal  and  kindness  than 
Peel,  cheering  me  repeatedly,  which  is  not  his  cus- 
tom. The  uproar  was  all  organized  by  the  Pads  and 
the  Pepealers.  They  formed  a  compact  body  near  the 
Bar  of  the  House  and  seemed  determined  to  set  me 
down,  but  that  they  did  not  do.  I  have  given  you  a 
most  impartial  account,  stated  indeed  against  my- 
self." 

Then  he  tells  the  story  of  Chandos,  certain  to 
soothe,  and  he  ends  the  letter  "Yours,  D.,  in  very 
good  spirits."  The  Times  helped  by  referring  to  "Mr. 
Disraeli's  eloquent  speech,"  and  if  against  this  was 
to  be  set  the  GIobe\s  "one  of  the  most  lamentable 
failures  of  late  years,"  the  Globe  was  an  ancient 
enemy  that  had  not  forgotten  its  quarrel;  while  the 
Morning  Chronicle\s  allusion  to  "a  maiden  but  not 
very  modest  speech,  which  even  his  nearest  friends 
will  tell  him  was  a  ridiculous  failure,"  lost  half  its 
sting  in  losing  all  its  truth.  Disraeli's  own  political 
account  of  the  fiasco  is  only  second  in  interest  to  his 
personal  and  domestic  account  of  it,  and  this,  by 
good  luck,  we  get  from  a  speech  he  made  a  week 

43 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

afterward  at  a  dinner  given  him  by  his  supporters 
in  Maidstone: 

"The  circumstances  in  which  I  addressed  the 
Speaker  were  altogether  unparalleled.  I  doubt  if  any- 
thing at  all  similar  to  them  had  ever  before  occurred. 
This  fault  only  I  find  with  myself.  I  was  warned  of 
the  reception  I  should  meet  with,  but  this  only  in- 
duced me  to  meet  it  the  sooner.  It  is  part  of  my 
constitution  to  meet  menacing  danger  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible. (Cheers.)  I  have  no  idea  of  shirking  a  conflict 
which  I  know  to  be  inevitable.  Yet  I  had  some  con- 
fidence in  the  honor  of  gentlemen.  I  did  not  think 
the  moment  a  new  member  rose  there  would  be  an  or- 
ganized conspiracy  to  put  him  down  by  clamor.  I 
have  stood  as  often  as  most  men  of  my  age  before 
assemblies  of  the  people — adverse  assemblies,  unwill- 
ing audiences — but  I  always  found  that  which  is  the 
boast  of  Britons — fair  play.  (Cheers.)  I  ever  found 
that  they  recognized  the  justice  of  our  national  adage 
that  'fair  play  is  a  jewel/  and  least  of  all  did  I  expect 
that  it  would  be  denied  by  the  gentlemen  of  England. 
But  why  do  I  style  them  '  gentlemen'  of  England? 
Oh,  no:  it  was  not  by  them  that  fair  play  was  denied; 
for  in  an  assembly  crowded  almost  beyond  parallel, 
in  which  nearly  six  hundred  members  w^ere  present, 
rising  at  midnight  to  address  the  House,  I  declare 
on  the  honor  of  a  gentleman  that  a  small  band  of 
thirty  or  forty  produced  all  the  uproar  you  have 
heard  of.  My  voice  had  not  been  raised  before  the 
insulting  Jeer  arose  and  the  affected  derision  was  ex- 
pressed  by  which  they  hoped  to  send  me  into  my  seat. 

44 


THE   MAIDEN   SPEECH 

But  I  tell  you  candidly  my  thoughts  instantly  revert- 
ed to  you,  my  constituents.  (Cheers.)  Is  this,  I  said 
to  myself,  the  return  for  your  generous  confidence, 
that  the  moment  I  rise  an  infuriated,  Jacobinical,  and 
Papistical  mob  should  raise  their  blatant  voices? 
Shall  I  yield  to  them  like  a  child  or  a  poltroon,  and  re- 
sume my  seat  with  pale  face  and  chattering  teeth? 
(Immense  cheering.)  No  such  thing,  gentlemen.  I 
determined  to  be  on  my  legs  exactly  the  period  I  in- 
tended my  speech  should  occupy.  I  succeeded  some- 
times in  comparative  calm;  sometimes  the  cheering 
of  friends  joining  with  the  yelling  of  the  foe;  some- 
times in  a  scene  of  tumult  unspeakable.  But  I  stood 
erect,  and  when  I  sat  down  I  sent  them  my  defiance. 
They  thought  to  put  me  down,  but  they  never  shall 
put  me  down.  (Immense  cheering.)  Yet,  gentlemen, 
I  would  not  have  you  suppose  for  a  moment,  when  I 
speak  thus,  that  I  am  deficient  in  respect  for  the 
House.  No  one  feels  more  deeply  than  myself  what  is 
due  to  the  House  of  Commons;  no  one  will  bend  more 
readily  to  its  opinion  or  the  decision  of  the  Speaker; 
no  one  will  respect  more  than  myself  the  wish  of  its 
smallest  section.  I  would  respect  it  because  I  feel 
the  feelings  of  an  individual  ought  not  to  be  placed  in 
competition  with  the  public  time  and  the  public  in- 
terests. But  there  are  certain  emergencies  in  which 
it  becomes  necessary  to  show  that  a  man  will  not  be 
crushed;  and  I  felt  that  the  circumstances  under 
which  so  unmanly  an  attack  was  made  upon  me  justi- 
fied me  in  retaining  my  position  for  upward  of  twen- 
ty minutes,  not,  I  have  reason  to  know,  in  opposition 

45 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

to  the  opinion  of  the  Speaker — not,  I  have  reason  to 
know,  in  opposition  to  the  feeling  of  the  leading  men 
of  all  parties.  Therefore  I  could  not  justify  myself 
In  sitting  down  and  acknowledging  myself  overawed 
by  a  small  and  contemptible  mob.  (Cheers.)  For  the 
House  of  Commons  collectively  I  entertain  unbound- 
ed respect,  and  I  would  bow  submissively  to  the 
dictum  of  the  Speaker  or  the  vote  of  any  considerable 
number  of  its  members;  but  can  I  conceal  from  my- 
self, can  any  practical  man  conceal  from  himself,  that 
there  are  many  members  in  that  House  who  are  be- 
neath contempt;  and,  because  a  small  herd  of  mem- 
bers, whom  individually  and  collectively  I  despise,  con- 
gregate like  skulking  cowards  in  the  remote  corners 
of  the  House  to  assail  me  with  disgraceful  uproar,  was 
it  for  your  representative,  gentlemen,  to  fall  down 
before  them  like  a  craven  slave?  (Cheers.)  No, 
gentlemen;  I  expressed  what  I  thought.  I  told  them 
'the  time  would  come  when  they  would  be  obliged  to 
listen  to  me,'  and  so  long  as  I  possess  the  confidence 
of  my  constituents,  so  long  as  I  meet  them  with  minds 
so  firm  and  hearts  so  sound  toward  me,  believe  me, 
I  will  take  care  to  reduce  my  promise  to  practise. 
I  will  speak,  and  they  shall  hear  me.  (Cheers.) 
They  may  have  prevented  me  from  making  a 
good  speech,  but  they  could  not  deter  me  from  mak- 
ing a  good  fight;  and  I  trust  I  have  not  disappointed 
you.     (No,  no.)" 

Disraeli,  in  those  early  days,  often  loudly  whistled 
to  keep  up  his  own  courage.  It  is  agreeable  to  close 
the  record  of  that  first  speech  with  the  reminiscence 

46 


THE   MAIDEN    SPEECH 

of  one  who  listened  from  the  opposite  benches,  and 
who  was  afterward  to  be  a  Foreign  Secretary  dogging 
the  steps  of  Lord  Beaconsfield.  The  Mr.  Leveson 
Gower  of  1837  was  the  Lord  Granville  of  1881  when, 
looking  back  for  more  than  forty  years,  he  said  in 
his  panegyric — it  can  be  called  no  less — of  his  dead 
opponent: 

'That  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  played  his  part  in 
English  history,  that  he  had  rare  and  splendid  gifts 
and  great  force  of  character,  no  one  can  deny.  I  doubt 
whether  to  many  public  men  can  the  quality  of  genius 
be  more  fitly  attributed.  It  w^as  by  his  strong  in- 
dividuality, unaided  by  adventitious  circumstances, 
that  he  owed  his  great  personal  success.  Assisted  by 
those  social  circumstances  that  Mr.  Disraeli  was  with- 
out, I  came  into  the  House  of  Commons  at  an  early 
age,  and  six  months  before  he  took  his  seat  in  that 
assembly.  I  thus  heard  him  make  that  speech,  famous 
for  its  failure,  a  speech  which,  I  am  convinced,  had 
it  been  made  when  he  was  better  known  to  the  House 
of  Commons,  would  haA'^e  been  received  with  cheers 
and  sympathy  instead  of  with  derisive  laughter,  but 
which,  owing  to  the  prejudices  of  his  audience,  he 
was  obliged  to  close  with  a  sentence  which,  like  a 
somewhat  similar  ejaculation  of  Mr.  Sheridan,  showed 
the  unconquerable  confidence  w^hich  strong  men  have 
in  their  own  power.-' 

Whether  the  speech  was  good  or  bad,  mattered 
nothing  then  to  those  w^ho  scoffed;  matters  nothing 
now.  The  speaker  preserved  his  individuality — even 
his   idiosyncrasy.     He   did   not   change  his   tongue; 

47 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

the  House  attuned  its  ear.  He  had  escaped  the 
mold  and  thumb-screw  of  public  school,  the  uni- 
versity iron-maiden.  Less  malleable  now,  he  passed 
the  ordeal  of  Parliamentary  life — Disraeli  still;  un- 
yielding to  the  Philistines. 

"But  your  friends  will  not  allow  me  to  finish  my 
pictures."  This  was  Disraeli's  natural  parry  to  the 
question  put  to  him  by  Sir  John  Campbell,  the  Liberal 
Attorney-General,  who  came  up  to  him  in  the  Lobby, 
as  a  stranger,  yet  cordially,  asking:  "Now,  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, could  you  just  tell  me  how  you  finished  one  sen- 
tence in  your  speech — we  are  anxious  to  know:    'In 

one  hand  the  keys  of  St.  Peter  and  in  the  other '?'' 

Disraeli  good-naturedly  completed  the  quotation — "in 
the  other  the  cap  of  Liberty."  The  Attorney-General, 
having  to  say  something,  said  "a  good  picture," 
whereupon  Disraeli  made  his  plaint  about  the  inter- 
ference that  prevented  his  completion  of  his  picture. 
Then  Sir  John  disowned  the  "party  at  the  Bar,  over 
whom  we  had  no  control,"  adding,  "but  you  have 
nothing  to  be  afraid  of." 

Nor  had  he.  "Nothing  daunted"  (his  own  phrase), 
he  rose  ten  days  later  and  spoke  on  Talfourd's 
Copyright  Bill,  as  he  says,  "with  complete  success." 
Following  Peel,  he  was  received  "with  the  utmost 
curiosity  and  attention."  A  general  cheer,  in  which 
Lord  John  Russell  joined,  greeted  the  peroration:  "It 
has  been  the  boast  of  the  Whig  party,  and  a  boast  not 
without  foundation,  that  in  many  brilliant  periods  of 
our  literary  annals,  they  have  been  the  patrons  of 
letters.    As  for  myself,  I  trust  that  the  age  of  literary 

48 


MARRIED    LIFE 

patronage  has  passed,  and  it  will  be  honorable  to 
the  present  Government  if,  under  its  auspices,  it  be 
succeeded  by  that  of  legislative  protection."  Tal- 
foiird  said  he  would  avail  himself  of  an  "excellent 
suggestion''  made  (at  Colburn's  instance)  by  "the  hon- 
orable member  for  Maidstone,  himself  one  of  the 
greatest  ornaments  of  our  modern  literature,''  and 
Peel  cheered  loudly  at  that.  "Everybody  congratu- 
lated me:"  Colonel  Lygon  saying,  "Well,  you  have  got 
in  your  saddle  again,  and  now  you  may  ride  away," 
and  Grenville  Somerset  declaring,  "I  never  heard  a 
few  sentences  so  admirably  delivered — you  will  allow 
me  to  say  so,  after  having  been  twenty-five  years  in 
Parliament?"  Even  the  meager  report  in  the  papers 
did  nothing  to  disturb  the  equanimity  of  the  neophyte 
who  feared  not  to  foretell :  "It  is  my  firm  opinion  that 
the  next  time  I  rise  in  the  House,  I  shall  sit  down 
amid  loud  cheers,  for  I  really  think,  on  the  whole, 
that  the  effect  of  my  debut,  and  the  circumstances 
that  attended  it,  will  ultimately  be  favorable  to  my 
career.  The  many  articles  that  are  daily  written  to  an- 
nounce my  failure  only  prove  that  I  have  not  failed." 
Lastly,  we  bear  in  mind  a  verse  which  Randolph 
wrote  to  Ben  Jonson  when  Ben's  comedy  The  New 
Inn  had  been  laughed  off  the  stage.  It  was  a  verse 
already  familiar  to  Victorian  Ben;  and  one  fancies 
him  saying  it  to  himself,  for  comfort,  as  he  sat  de- 
jectedly through  the  remainder  of  the  debate  that 
had  brought  him  humiliation. 

Ben,  do  not  leave  the  stage, 
Cause  'tis  a  loathsome  age; 
6  49 


RKNJAMIN    PlSKAKl.l 

WVml  tiWej  SiT^    >x-Ar  ;;  TvVvi 


iJhr  vW.  s^'Tv*  T^Niis  later. 


TW  VK^^'  -It  RK^wY'>;.  &»i  it  vas 

**V^  pstr  w;fc*  "  t«i»  Mrs. 


Of  t&fe  feiieiiy  laJV^  bnrk 


M  AKKIKP    I  IFK 


jjivtMi.  ••\"iiu\v  Kvans").  l.ioiUon;u»t  ^luM  "(^iplnin"  nor 
yet  ••i.\>iniuaiiilor")  in  (ho  Ko\;il  N;i\\.  His  paicnlH 
woro  .Iv^hn  l\vniis  o(  nr;iiu]»foi«l  Sp('k(>  (^not  "r»inur«« 
ford  rark"'K  an  hour's  >\nllv  oui  of  i:\«Mor.  Mini 
Kloaiu>r  his  \vif«\  tlaiiiilitor  o(  ,l;niu\s  \  iuo\.  \  uMr  t>r 
Hishopstrow.  oo.  \\ihs.  Tho  \  iM(>\s  h:i«l  l>«'ou  l.ouls 
i^{  iho  Manor  o(  Tavnton;  (hoir  lonihs  ar«*  1<»  l>o 
soon  in  iho  l.ady  (Miapol  o(  ( I  lomoshM*  Cal  hot  ha  I;  and 
thoir  iivinu  naino  ^oi  a  nioro  1  han  hx  al  lanio  w  ii  h  Mi-h. 
IHsraoli's  nnclo.  (iontM-al  Sir  .lanios  \'inov.  \\  h<»  h-ll 
hor  a  h'<,^aoy  of  IL'.OOO  wh«'n  ho  .liod  in  IS  I  I  llri-onl\ 
brolhcM".  laonttMiant  Cohinol  d»din  \ino,\  IImiun.  diod 
duly  2,  is;?!),  cii^hl  wooUs  hoforo  sh<'  ohan-;o<l  h<M- 
iianio  anain,  this  limc  from  Louis  (o  Disraoli.  'IMm- 
man  who  \\as  so  near  lo  hoinu'  whal  W  illiain  Mor<' 
dith,  loo,  had  nearly  horn,  hnl  none  t'\t'V  was  I  )iH- 
raidi's  brot  lior  in  hiw  ,  lies  in  «h's«ilah'  Kcnsal  ^Jroon, 
whoro  his  toinhstono,  as  ilsolf  avows,  was  "iMiHo<l  lo 
his  moiiiory  by  his  alToclionalo  sisloi*,  Mary  Anno 
Lewis."  ^frs.  Disracdi's  fa(hoi'  had  Ihoti  h»tij;  b<'ori 
doad. 

"One  word  of  \\hi(  h  xon  arc  i^^iioranl,  ^ralilinh'." 
Tins  is  Disraeli's  ro|>l\',  ninfoianly  a^^i-cod  npon  as  fo 
its  terms,  made  to  a  (]neslion<'r  (variously  <|uoh'<l 
and  variously  named)  wlio  sj)ol<o  disrosfwd  fnlly  of 
Mrs.  Disraeli  to  her  husband. 

Sir  William  Orepjory  assif^ns  fho  ^au<h<'rio  tf) 
(leorjife  Smythe,  others  attribute  it  (o  Mr.  r.orrial 
Osborne.  Eeaders  may  doflino  on  rrion*  rumor  to 
attribute  a  rudeness  of  the  kind  to  anybody.  I^iit, 
for  the   present  purpose,  we  take  the  story  as  Rir 

51 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

William  Gregory  tells  it:  "Disraeli  looked  him 
straight  between  the  two  eyes,  and  said:  'George, 
there  is  one  word  in  the  English  languageof  whiehyou 
are  ignorant.'  'What  is  that?'  asked  Smythe,  some- 
what taken  aback,     'Gratitude,  George,'  said  Dizzy." 

Of  many  other  stories,  told  at  Lady  Beaconsfield's 
expense,  one  need  not  here  make  a  collection.  Some 
of  her  alleged  sayings  in  country-houses  are  accepted 
as  trustworthy  because  told  on  the  authority  of  "a 
son  of  the  house."  Sons  of  the  houses  will  be  grati- 
fied by  this  universal  faith  in  their  veracity. 

It  is  noteworthy  that,  while  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
friends  have  mostly  been  silent  about  him,  those  who 
are  other  than  his  friends  have  published  volubly  at 
his  expense.  Sir  William  Gregory  does  indeed  call 
himself  his  "friend."  Sir  William  did  not  belong  to 
the  party  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  educated;  and  yet 
Lord  Beaconsfield  gave  him  his  heart's  desire — the 
Governorship  of  Ceylon.  W^ith  his  summing-up  of 
Disraeli  the  politician  as  a  "charlatan"  we  do  not 
need  to  deal.  But  in  private  life  those  two  men  took 
salt  together.  Sir  William,  who  says  that  at  one 
period  there  was  hardly  a  week  in  which  he  did  not 
dine  with  the  Beaconsfields,  thus  describes  his  host- 
ess: "She  was  a  most  repulsive  woman,  flat,  angu- 
lar, underbred."  Again,  the  guest  takes  us  into  a 
confidence:  "It  was  ludicrous,"  says  Sir  William,  "to 
see  the  tokens  of  affection  and  apparently  of  admira- 
tion which  he  lavished  upon  Marianne,  as  we  irrev- 
erently called  her.  One  evening,  on  coming  up  from 
dinner,  he  knelt  before  her,  and,  as  they  say  in  novels, 

52 


S(^:CtA,,^llt.yUcCMe  ^J/Aia/c 


MARRIED   LIFE 

devoured  both  her  hands  with  kisses,  saying  at  the 
same  time,  in  the  most  lackadaisical  manner,  'Is  there 
anything  I  can  do  for  my  dear  little  wife?'  "  At  last 
Disraeli  is  some  other  than  an  onlooker;  and  in  that 
scene  the  casual  onlooker  was  evidently  at  a  disad- 
vantage: even  Disraeli's  love-making  was  distasteful 
to  a  third  person.  So  much  one  adventures  in  apol- 
ogy for  Sir  William  Gregory. 

"We  have  been  married  thirty  years;  and  she  has 
never  given  me  a  dull  moment."  So  said  Disraeli  to 
Lord  Konald  Gower  of  the  "perfect  wife"  as  that  per- 
fect wifehood  drew  near  its  destined  close.  All 
stories  told  of  Lady  Beaconsfield  agree  in  one  par- 
ticular— her  devotion  to  her  husband.  A  more  useful 
daily  quality  than  devotion  even  was  her  power  to 
amuse  him.  That  never  failed.  Once  when  Sir  John 
Mowbray  marveled  at  Disraeli's  hasty  dinners  and 
hard  attendances  at  the  House,  and  said  he  did  not 
know  how  the  Minister  was  kept  going.  Lady  Beacons- 
field  replied:  "Ah,  but  I  always  have  supper  for  him 
when  he  comes  home,  and  lights,  lights,  plenty  of 
lights — Dizzy  always  likes  light.  And  then  he  tells 
me  all  that  has  happened  in  the  House,  and  then  I 
clap  him  off  to  bed." 

Once,  in  her  effort  to  amuse  Disraeli,  she  made 
Sir  William  Harcourt  blush.  He  was  dining  with  the 
Disraelis  and  sat  beside  the  hostess,  who  observed 
that  he  was  looking  at  the  picture  of  a  lightly  robed 
lady  on  the  wall  opposite,  and  said:  "It  oughtn't  to 
be  allowed  in  here;  but  it  is  nothing  to  the  Venus  that 
Dizzy  has  up  in  his  bedroom."    "That  I  can  well  be- 

53 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

lieve,"  replied  he,  with  a  gallant  bow.  Of  course  the 
story  had  to  be  told  to  Dizzy,  who  always  delighted 
in  Hareourt's  wit;  and,  all  the  company  hearing  it, 
Harcourt  perhaps  had  a  bad  half-minute.  This  was 
one  of  the  rare  occasions  on  which  Disraeli  smiled. 

"Man  is  a  predatory  animal.  The  worthiest  ob- 
jects of  his  chase  are  women  and  power.  After  I 
married  Mary  Anne,  I  desisted  from  the  one  and  de- 
voted my  life  to  the  pursuit  of  the  other."  This  is  one 
of  the  many  sayings  which  are  quoted  to  show  that 
Disraeli  was  a  cynic;  but  which,  as  we  know  from 
history,  need  mean  no  more  than  that  it  was  a  cynic 
to  whom  they  were,  partly  in  sympathy,  partly  in 
an  understood  jocosity,  addressed. 

"She  suffers  so  dreadfully  at  times."  This  also 
to  Lord  Ronald  Gower,  who  adds:  "It  was  quite 
touching  to  see  his  distress.  His  face,  generally  so 
emotionless,  was  filled  with  a  look  of  suffering  and 
wo  that  nothing  but  the  sorrow  of  her  he  so  truly 
loved  could  cause  on  that  impassive  countenance." 
Dizzyites,  who  acknowledged  their  debt  to  Lord  Ron- 
ald's pen  and  chisel,  must  marvel  that  one  who  re- 
ceived this  close  confidence  could  afterward  be 
jaunty  at  the  expense  of  the  dead  woman  whom  Dis- 
raeli "so  truly  loved." 

To  Lord  Malmesbury,  after  the  death  of  Lady 
Beaconsfield:  "I  hope  some  of  my  friends  will  take 
notice  of  me  now.  I  feel  as  if  I  had  no  home.  When 
I  tell  my  coachman  to  drive  'Home,'  I  feel  it  is  a 
mockery." 

This  Disraeli  said  "with  tears  in  his  eyes,"  as  Lord 

54 


MARllIEU    LIFE 

Malmesbury  told  the  House  of  Lords  on  the  occasion 
of  the  Address  to  Her  Majesty  praying  for  a  memorial 
to  the  Favorite  Minister  in  Westminster  Abbey.  The 
humble  phrase  "take  notice  of  me  now"  possibly  cov- 
ered a  refusal  to  go  to  Heron's  Court,  where,  more 
than  once,  Disraeli  had  been  the  guest  of  Lord 
Malmesbury.  Sincere  as  well  as  profuse  hospitality 
had  been  extended  to  him  in  the  past;  and  his  re- 
fusals were  far  more  frequent  than  his  acceptances. 
Great  houses,  in  town  and  country,  from  his  early 
manhood  had  opened  their  doors  to  one  who  had  made 
himself  indispensable  where  he  had  not  made  himself 
loved.  The  Duchess  of  Rutland  (who  modestly  omits 
from  her  list  Belvoir  itself)  writes:  "The  halls  of 
Mentmore,  the  sweet  shades  of  Cliveden,  the  libraries 
of  Knowsley,  the  galleries  of  Blenheim;  Bretby,  with 
all  its  associations  of  wit;  Hatfield,  combining  the 
charms  of  past  and  present;  Weston,  with  its  glorious 
oaks;  Knole,  with  its  antique  chambers,  its  eighty 
staircases;  and  Trentham,  with  its  terraced  gardens, 
among  other  places,  were  all  homes  where  he  was 
eagerly  welcomed." 

Disraeli's  own  tributes  to  "the  severest  of  critics 
but  a  perfect  wife,"  to  one  whose  "taste  and  judg- 
ment" (we  are  glad  to  set  this  testimony  against  a 
ream  of  anecdotage)  "ever  guided"  the  pages  of  Sybil; 
his  avowal  in  Edinburgh :  "I  do  owe  to  that  lady  all  I 
think  I  have  ever  accomplished,  because  she  has  sup- 
ported me  by  her  counsels  and  consoled  me  by  the 
sweetness  of  her  disposition;" — these  are  the  records 
that  will  endure. 

55 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

To  these  may  be  given  a  postscript  worthy  of  its 
place  of  honor — the  tribute  paid  by  Sir  William  Har- 
court  to  Lady  Beaconsfield  in  the  Times  the  day  after 
her  death  in  December,  1872: 

"Thus  closes,  in  the  fulness  of  years,  a  life  which 
has  exerted  no  inconsiderable  influence  on  English 
politics.  She  stands  out  a  striking  illustration  of  the 
power  the  most  unobtrusive  of  women  may  exercise, 
while  keeping  herself  strictly  to  a  woman's  sphere. 
Looking  back  on  the  long  and  tender  relationship 
which  has  been  dissolved  in  the  course  of  nature,  we 
are  irresistibly  reminded  of  the  feelings  expressed  by 
Mahomed  when  the  Prophet  of  the  Faithful  lost  the 
loving  woman  he  had  married  in  the  days  of  com- 
parative obscurity.  'By  God,'  he  exclaimed  in  an  out- 
burst of  regretful  gratitude,  as  he  raised  her  solemn- 
ly  to  the  rank  of  the  four  perfect  women — 'by  God 
there  never  was  a  better  wife.  She  believed  in  me 
when  men  despised  me.  She  relieved  my  wants  when 
I  was  poor  and  persecuted  by  the  world.'  It  was  deep- 
seated,  kindly  sentiment  of  the  sort  which  made  Mr. 
Disraeli  the  devoted  husband  Lady  Beaconsfield  found 
him,  and  once  he  vented  it  with  equally  honest  ve- 
hemence in  reproof  of  an  indiscreet  acquaintance  who 
ventured  indelicately  on  personal  ground.  His  wife 
had  come  to  his  help  when  life  had  threatened  to  be 
too  short  to  assure  him  the  prospect  he  had  dreamt 
of.  At  length  he  had  taken  his  seat  in  Parliament. 
He  came  to  it  conscious  of  the  possession  of  no  ordi- 
nary political  talents,  and  of  the  rarer  gifts  which 
should  make  a  great  party  leader.     He  had  always 

56 


MARRIED   LIFE 

believed  in  himself  aud  had  never  scrupled  to  pro- 
claim his  faith  ostentatiously.  He  knew  himself  to 
combine  originality  and  versatility  with  absolute  in- 
dependence of  thought  and  a  contemptuous  indiffer- 
ence to  party  tradition.  He  had  cast  in  his  lot  with 
the  Conservatives,  and  those  w'ere  the  very  qualities 
to  enable  a  man  to  rally  a  beaten  party  upon  new 
ground,  and  to  fight  a  losing  battle  in  face  of  the  in- 
evitable Liberal  advance.  But  time  was  everything 
to  him,  and  the  precious  time  was  slipping  away  fast. 
As  yet  he  sat  almost  alone;  he  had  few  friends  and 
no  intimates.  Ancient  as  it  was,  his  birth  was  against 
him — the  country  gentleman  would  have  been  slow 
to  admit  to  companionship  a  lineal  descendant  even 
of  the  Maccabees, — so  were  his  dress  and  demeanor, 
the  style  of  his  speech,  and  even  his  somewhat  eccen- 
tric literary  reputation.  More  than  that,  he  had  al- 
ready failed  in  the  House,  to  the  disappointment  of 
the  political  chief  who  had  expected  great  things  of 
him.  He  felt,  in  fact,  that  he  was  regarded  askance 
as  an  unsuccessful  adventurer.  Had  the  leaders  of 
his  party  been  in  the  secret  of  his  aspirations,  they 
would  have  scoffed  at  them  as  the  insane  visions  of 
an  enthusiast.  Believing  in  himself  more  firmly  than 
ever,  his  strong  common  sense  could  only  tend  to  dis- 
courage him  on  a  nearer  view  of  the  difficulties  before 
him.  With  time  and  patience  he  might  win,  no  doubt; 
but  who  could  say  the  time  would  be  given  him?  Life 
is  precarious,  anxiety  and  disappointment  tell  terri- 
bly on  a  sanguine  and  farden  nature.  A  little  of  the 
material  prosperity  that  seemed  the  common  lot  of 

57 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

the  luckier  men  around  him  would  make  all  the  dif- 
ference; for  England  then^  more  than  now,  insisted 
on  a  high  property  qualification  as  a  material  guar- 
antee for  the  virtue  of  her  statesmen.  When  he  might 
well  have  despaired  had  his  nature  been  a  despondent 
one,  a  fortunate  marriage  smoothed  the  path  of  his 
ambition. 

^'It  is  no  fault  of  ours  if  we  have  to  write  rather 
of  the  husband  than  the  wife.  From  their  wedding- 
day  till  now  the  existence  of  the  one  was  merged  in 
that  of  the  other.  It  was  their  mutual  happiness  that 
the  wife  lived  only  in  the  husband;  the  husband's  ex- 
traordinary career  was  the  happy  achievement  of  her 
life,  and  it  was  her  pride  to  shine  in  the  reflection  of 
his  fame.     .     .     . 

"Mrs.  Disraeli  was  many  years  ^  her  second  hus- 
band's senior  (when  she  died  she  had  reached  the 
venerable  age  of  eighty-three) ;  on  the  other  hand  she 
had  the  money  he  desired  for  something  better  than 
sordid  motives.  But  Mr.  Disraeli  was  too  shrewd  a 
man  to  pay  for  name  and  power  at  the  price  of  hap- 
piness. It  is  certain  he  chose  wisely  every  way,  and 
seldom  has  a  marriage  proved  more  of  a  love-match 
than  his.  We  are  glad  to  believe  that  the  romance 
of  real  life  often  begins  at  the  point  where  it  invaria- 
bly ends  in  fiction.  .  .  .  How  many  husbands, 
far  less  engrossed  abroad,  have  considered  a  tithe  of 
the  fame  he  won  sufficient  acquittal  of  so  old  a  debt! 
How  many  content  themselves  with  leaving  their 
wives  to  enjoy  prosperity  in  isolation!     Mr.  Disraeli 

*  In  plain  figures,  15— she  fifty,  he  thirty-five,  when  they  married. 

58 


did  no  such  thing,  although  for  that  he  would  claim 
but  little  credit.  The  fact  is  his  wife  made  his  home 
a  very  happy  one,  and  he  turned  to  its  peacefulness 
with  intense  relief  in  the  midst  of  fierce  political 
turmoil.  We  are  apt  to  forget  that  most  men  lead  a 
double  life;  that  those  of  the  strongest  natures  and 
the  sharpest  individuality  show  themselves  in  the 
most  marked  contrasts.  It  was  a  pretty  sight,  that  of 
the  remorseless  Parliamentary  gladiator,  who  neither 
gave  quarter  nor  asked  it,  who  fought  with  venomed 
weapons  although  he  struck  fair,  and  shot  barbed 
darts  which  clung  and  rankled  in  the  wounds — it  was 
a  pretty  sight  to  see  him  in  the  soft  sunshine  of  do- 
mestic life,  anticipating  the  wishes  of  his  wife  with 
feminine  tenderness  of  consideration,  and  receiving 
her  ministering  with  the  evident  enjoyment  which  is 
the  most  delicate  flattery  of  all.  The  secret  of  the 
spell  she  held  him  by  was  a  simple  one.  She  loved  him 
with  her  whole  heart  and  soul,  she  believed  in  him 
above  all  men,  and  he  appreciated  at  its  real  worth 
that  single-minded,  self-sacrificing  devotion.  It  is 
difficult  to  overrate  the  strength  and  support  given 
by  unstinted  love  like  that,  and  few,  we  suspect,  ap- 
preciate it  more  than  those  who  would  seem  to  need 
it  least.  It  is  neither  counsel  nor  sparkle,  but  ol)- 
servant,  ready  sympathy  that  a  man  of  energy  and 
self-reliance  loners  for  in  moments  of  exhaustion  and 
depression,  and  the  more  impassible  the  mask  he 
wears  the  greater  the  relief  of  being  able  to  drop  it 
in  private.  Lady  Beaconsfield  was  very  far  from  being 
a  reserved  woman.     She  must  have  often  talked  too 

59 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

fast  and  freely  for  her  husband's  liking;  occasionally 
the  expressions  of  her  artless  admiration  for  him 
were  caught  up  and  colored,  to  be  circulated  as  'good 
stories'  at  dinner-tables;  but  the  intuitive  instinct  of 
her  affection  set  a  seal  on  her  lips  in  the  minutest 
matters  where  her  talk  might  do  him  an  injury.  She 
was  very  much  in  his  confidence,  and  she  was  never 
known  to  betray  it.  Except  for  the  subtle  influences 
of  the  home  she  made  him,  the  help  she  brought  was 
passive  rather  than  active  from  first  to  last.  All  he 
had  asked  was  fair  play  for  his  talents  at  the  start; 
her  fortune  had  given  him  that,  and  he  did  the  rest 
himself. 

"So,  in  after-years,  while  he  led  his  party  in  the 
Lower  House  or  served  the  State  as  Premier  of 
England,  she  had  neither  social  talents  nor  fascina- 
tion to  place  at  his  disposal.  It  was  not  in  her  to 
make  his  salons  a  center  of  society,  to  gather  within 
the  range  of  his  influence  eminent  Englishmen  and 
influential  foreigners,  or  to  sway  by  the  reputation  of 
brilliant  r6unions  the  easy  opinions  of  liberal-minded 
politicians.  She  was  no  Lady  Palmerston  to  act  as 
her  husband's  most  trusted  ally,  working  for  him  in 
season  and  out  of  season  with  tact  quickened  by 
love.  Her  death  will  leave  no  gap  behind  her  which 
bereaved  society  will  find  it  hard  to  fill.  But  perhaps 
her  husband  will  lose  the  more  that  society  will  lose 
the  less.  Her  love  for  him  was  wonderful,  'passing 
the  love  of  women.'  It  was  shown  in  traits  of  un- 
obtrusive heroism  worthy  of  the  matrons  of  Repub- 
lican Rome.    Few  men  can  boast  the  courageous  self- 

60 


Photograph  b;/  J.  P.  Slurlhu/,  High   ]\'i/combe. 

MAIJY    AX\i;     l)TSI{Ai:i.I,    VISCOUXTESS    BEACOXSFIELD. 
Irom  tlie  portrait   at  Hughenden  Manor. 


TALK   WITH   THOMAS   COOPER 

coinmaiul  wliifh  made  her  conceal,  during  a  long  drive 
to  Westminster,  the  pain  of  a  finger  crushed  in  the 
carriage-door,  lest  she  should  agitate  her  husband  on 
the  eve  of  a  great  party  debate.  She  knew  a  word 
could  always  bring  her  the  sympathy.  It  was  her 
sweetest  consolation,  but  to  the  last  her  one  thought 
was  to  spare  him.  Surprised  by  a  sudden  flow  of  blood 
from  an  incurable  cancer,  knowing  that  her  doom 
was  certain,  and  that  their  happy  wedded  life  was  fast 
drawing  to  its  end,  she  had  the  touching  resolution 
to  preserve  her  secret;  while,  all  the  time  knowing 
it  as  well  as  she,  he  never  for  a  moment  suffered  her 
to  guess  his  knowledge  or  gave  her  the  grief  of  see- 
ing him  suffer.  It  was  the  graceful  symbol  of  the 
chivalrous  devotion  which  had  never  wavered;  it  was 
an  appropriate  return  for  the  inestimable  services  she 
had  done  him  when,  in  November,  1868,  he  could  offer 
her  the  peerage  bestowed  in  acknowledgment  of  a  dis- 
tinguished career.  The  loss  of  his  companion  has 
snapped  the  tender  associations  of  a  lifetime,  and 
must  have  left  a  blank  which  nothing  can  entirely  fill. 
The  sympathy  of  the  public  can  count  for  little  when 
he  misses  that  he  has  so  long  been  used  to.  Yet  to 
a  veteran  in  public  life  there  must  be  comfort  in  the 
thought  that  the  public  you  have  served  is  feeling 
with  you;  that  England,  irrespective  of  party,  de- 
plores even  the  timely  termination  of  an  essentially 
English  union." 

"I  wish  I  had  seen  you  before  I  finished  my  last 
novel:  my  heroine,  Sybil,  is  a  Chartist."    So  said  Dis- 

61 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

raeli  to  Thomas  Cooper,  Chartist.     To  know  all  the 

misery  of  the  poor — and  Disraeli  had  the  energy  to 

examine  and  the  imaofination  to  realize 

Talk  with  *= 

Thomas  Coo-  it — is  surely  to  forgive  their  rebellion 
per,  Chartist,    ^gj^ijjg^  ^j^g  existing  order— or  disorder — 

of  things;  and  Disraeli  not  only  visited  the  scene  of 
Chartist  riots  as  a  novelist  note-taker,  but  proclaimed 
as  a  politician  the  gospel  of  amnesty  when  the  case  of 
the  "rebel  printers,"  Lovett  and  Collins,  came  before 
the  House  of  Commons;  and  again  declared  himself, 
in  the  debate  on  a  want  of  confidence  in  the  Melbourne 
Administration  in  1840: 

"I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  that  I  wish  more  sym- 
pathy had  been  shown  on  both  sides  toward  the 
Chartists."  ^ 

Later  occurred  this  episode  with  Thomas  Cooper, 
who  had  finished  his  Purgatory  of  Suicides  in  Stafford 
Jail,  and  came  thence  w^ith  his  MS.  (and  his  own  at- 
tenuated frame)  in  the  May  of  1845.  On  reaching  Lon- 
don, he  called  upon  that  excellent  Tory-bred  Radical, 
Thomas  Slingsby  Duncombe,  in  the  Albany,  Picca- 
dilly, and  was  there  received  with  kindness.  In  the 
course  of  their  talk,  the  "Prison  Rhyme"  was  referred 
to,  and  the  poet  asked  Tommy  Duncombe  for  an  in- 
troduction  to   a  publisher.     "A   publisher! — why,   I 

'  This  -was  that  famous  speech  in  which  Disraeli  twitted  Loi-d  John  TJiis- 
sell,  the  Home  Secretary,  as  one  who  could  encourage  sedition  with  one  hand 
and  slioot  down  the  seditious  with  the  other.  "  The  Chartists  would  discover 
that  in  a  country  so  aristocratic  as  England  even  treason,  to  be  successful, 
must  be  patrician.  Where  Wat  Tyler  failed,  Henry  Eolinghroke  changed  a 
dynasty,  and  although  Jack  Straw  was  hanged  a  Lord  John  Straw  might  be* 
come  a  Secretary  of  State." 

02 


MAiiv   axm;   |)1si{ai:i.i,   viscorxi  i:ss   1'.i;ac().\si  ii;i.1). 

I'roiu  tlie  portrait  by  A.  K.  C'halon,  1{.A.,   184(}. 


TALK   WITH   THOMAS    COOPER 

have  uever  published  anything  in  my  life.  I  know 
nothing  of  publishers,  but  I  will  write  a  note  to  Dis- 
raeli for  you."    The  note  ran: 

''My  dear  Disraeli, — I  send  you  Mr.  Cooper,  a 
Chartist  red-hot  from  Stafford  Jail.  But  don't  be 
frightened;  he  won't  bite  you.  He  has  written  a  poem 
and  a  romance;  and  thinks  he  can  cut  out  Coningshy 
and  Sybil.    Help  him,  if  you  can,  and  oblige,  yours, 

"T.    S.    DUNCOMBE." 

Cooper  read  doubtfully,  and  turning  to  Duncombe, 
said:  "You  would  not  have  me  take  a  note  like  that?" 
"Wouldn't  I?"  he  answered;  "but  I  would;  it  is  just 
the  thing  for  you;  get  off  and  present  it  at  once."  The 
Chartist  took  his  way  to  Grosvenor  Gate,  and  found 
Disraeli  in  his  study.     Gratefully  he  tells  the  story: 

"One  sees  paragraphs  very  often  now  in  the  papers 
about  the  expressionless  and  jaded  look  of  the  Con- 
servative leader's  face,  as  Mr.  Disraeli  sits  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Yet  as  I  then  looked  upon  that 
face,  I  thought  it  one  of  great  intellectual  beauty. 
The  eyes  seemed  living  lights;  and  the  intelligent  yet 
kindly  way  in  which  Mr.  Disraeli  inquired  about  the 
term  of  my  imprisonment  and  treatment  in  prison 
convinced  me  that  I  was  in  the  presence  of  a  very 
shrewd  as  well  as  highly  cultivated  and  refined  man." 

Disraeli,  after  expressing  the  wish  already  quoted, 
gave  Tooper  an  introduction  to  Moxon.  But  Moxon 
declined  to  publish  The  Purgatory  of  Suicklcft,  "by 
Thomas  Cooper,  Chartist,"  on  the  ground  that  there 
was  no  chance  of  its  selling.  Cooper,  writing  this  to 
Disraeli,  received  by  the  next  post  a  note  to  Colburn. 

63 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Disraeli's  own  publisher.  From  him  also  came  a  re- 
fusal. "I  ventured,"  says  Cooper,  "to  call  upon  Mr. 
Disraeli  the  second  time.  He  seemed  really  concerned 
at  what  I  told  him;  and  when  I  asked  him  to  give  me 
a  note  to  Messrs.  Chapman  &  Hall,  he  looked  thought- 
fully, and  said:  'No;  I  know  nothing  of  them  person- 
ally, and  I  should  not  like  to  write  to  them.  But  I 
will  give  you  a  note  to  Ainsworth,  and  desire  him  to 
recommend  you  to  Chapman  &  Hall.'  "  ^  Cooper  took 
the  note  to  Ainsworth,  who,  knowing  that  Chap- 
man &  Hall  consulted  John  Forster  as  their  reader, 
sent  Cooper  on  to  him.  "Forster  looked  at  the  poem, 
and  said:  'I  suppose  you  have  no  objection  to  alter 
the  title  you  give  yourself.  I  certainly  advise  you  to 
strike  the  Chartist  out?'  'Nay,  sir,'  I  replied;  'I  shall 
not  strike  it  out.    Mr.  Disraeli  advised  me  not  to  let 


■  Disraeli  had  relations  with  many  publishers ;  and,  characteristically,  be 
has  not  an  ill  natured  word  for  one  among  them  :  almost  the  only  author  of 
his  time  who  did  not  visit  his  own  incompetence  or  the  indifference  of  the 
public  upon  the  luckless  agent.  Indeed,  Disraeli  himself,  according  to  one 
rumor,  early  wished  to  join  the  trade,  as  partner  to  Moxon.  Besides  Moion's 
and  Colburn's,  the  following  are  names  that  appear  on  his  title-pages  :  John 
Murray;  William  Marsh;  Saunders  &  Otley  ("If  you  are  Otley,  d Saun- 
ders— if  you  are  Saunders,  d Otley,"  Bulwer,  at  his  wittiest,  had  said 

when  he  went  with  a  grievance  to  Conduit  Street,  addressing  the  first  repre- 
sentative of  the  firm  he  found  there);  John  Maorone ;  John  Ollivier;  Bern- 
hard  Tauchnitz ;  W.  E.  Painter ;  J.  J.  Griffin ;  David  Bryce ;  G.  Routledge 
and  Routledge,  Warnes  &  Routledge ;  Robert  Hardwicke  ;  Rivingtons ;  Long- 
man, Green,  Longman,  Roberts  &  Green,  and  the  same  firm  under  subsequent 
simpler  guises;  William  Blackwood  &  Sons;  John  Camden  Hotten;  and 
Frederick  Warne  &  Co.  To  Albemarle  Street,  which  issued  his  first  book, 
went  fitly  for  posthumous  publication  Disraeli's  Home  Letters  and  his  Cor- 
respondence ivith  his  Sister.  The  reigning  John  Murray  of  the  'twenties  he 
counted  among  the  first  of  his  discoverers,  allies,  and  friends ;  and  to  the  .John 
Murray  of  to-day  the  Disraeli  biographer  is  under  many  and  deep  obligations. 

64 


THE   "SPLENDID   FAILURE  ' 

any  one  persuade  me  to  strike  it  out;  and  I  mean  to 
abide  by  his  advice.'  "  This  episode — a  very  typical 
one — gained  a  too  exceptional  turn  from  Mr.  Glad- 
stone when  he  moved  in  the  Uouse  of  Commons  the 
erection  of  a  monument  to  his  dead  adversary  in 
Westminster  Abbey: 

"It  is  only  within  the  last  few  days  that  I  have 
read  in  a  very  interesting  book,  TJie  Autobiography  of 
Thomas  Cooper,  how  in  the  year  1844,  when  his  in- 
fluence with  his  party  was  not  yet  established,  Mr. 
Cooper  came  to  him  in  the  character  of  a  struggling 
literary  man,  who  was  also  a  Chartist,  and  the 
then  Mr.  Disraeli  met  him  with  the  most  ac- 
tive and  cordial  kindness — so  ready  was  his  sympathy 
for  genius." 

The  illustrations  of  that  ingrained  and  cultivated 
quality  of  Disraeli's  (''I  who  admire  genius,"  was  a 
phrase  familiar  on  his  lips,  and  both  his  official  and 
his  private  life  repeatedly  transformed  the  word  into 
the  deed)  are  so  plentiful  and  conspicuous  that  one 
may  be  pardoned  for  feeling  a  little  sense  of  the 
ludicrous  in  presence  of  the  solitary  instance  cited  by 
Mr.  Gladstone. 

"Oh,  my  lord,  you  always  say  agreeable  things." 
So  far  back  as  the  October  of  1836,  Lord  Strangford 
The  "  Spien-  (the  translator  of  Camoens  and  the  father 
did  Failure."  ^^^  Goorge  Suiythe),  returning  to  town 
from  Strathfieldsaye,  reported  of  an  anti-0'Connell 
address  Disraeli  had  just  delivered  to  his  future 
friends,  the  farmers  of  Bucks:  "You  have  no  idea 
6  65 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

of  the  sensation  your  speech  has  produced  at  Strath- 
fieldsaye."  Disraeli  made  his  deprecation:  "Oh,  my 
lord,  you  always  say  agreeable  things."  Whereupon 
Lord  Strangford  took  aside  the  young  speaker  (not 
yet  a  member)  and  said:  "I  give  you  my  honor  as  a 
gentleman  that  the  Duke  said  at  the  dinner-table,  'It 
was  the  most  manly  thing  yet  done:  when  will  he  come 
into  Parliament?'  "  As  Radical  Bulwer  had  been  Dis- 
raeli's political  godfather,  it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  he,  too,  thought  the  new  Nationalist's  speech, 
which  even  Tory  leaders  applauded,  "the  finest  in  the 
world." 

Disraeli  first  met  Percy,  sixth  Lord  Strangford,  in 
1832,  and  after  a  dinner  given  by  Lord  Eliot  (after- 
ward Earl  of  St.  Germans),  described  him  as  "an 
aristocratic  Tom  Moore,"  whose  talk  was  incesssant 
and  brilliant — a  comparison  that  had  been  made 
already  with  a  less  friendly  touch: 

Let  Moore  still  sing,  let  Strangford  steal  from  Moore, 
And  swear  that  Cauioens  sang  such  songs  of  yore. 

So  sang,  if  that  is  the  word,  the  author  of  English 
Bards  and  Scotch  Revieivers;  and  again  he  enjoins 
^'Hibernian  Strangford  with  thine  eyes  of  blue" 

Cease  to  deceive,  thy  pilfered  harp  restore, 
Nor  teach  the  Lusian  bard  to  copy  Moore. 

Strangford  got  the  Legation  at  Lisbon  very  much 
in  consequence  of  his  fame  as  a  Portuguese  transla- 
tor; and  Moore  can  have  borne  him  no  grudge;  for 
when  a  translation  of  another  kind  was  in  his  view — 
that  was  the  night  before  he  was  to  "meet"  Jeffrey  to 

66 


THE    "SPLENDID    FAILURE" 

avenge  a  notice  in  the  Quarterly — he  wrote  to  Strang- 
ford:  "My  dear  friend,  if  they  want  a  biographer 
when  I  am  gone,  I  think  in  your  hands  1  should  meet 
with  most  kind  embalmment,  so  pray  say  something 
for  me  and  remember  me  as  one  who  has  felt  your 
good  and  social  qualities" — those  very  qualities  which 
Disraeli  thought  resembled  Moore's  own.  The  com- 
batants were  arrested  on  the  field,  with  their  pistols, 
by  the  thoughtfulness  of  the  seconds,  unloaded. 

As  a  letter-writer.  Lord  Strangford's  powers  are 
attested  by  the  replies  he  drew  from  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men — letters  edited  with  tactful  daring  by 
Mr.  Edward  Barrington  de  Fonblanque,  a  son  of  Dis- 
raeli's old  friend,  Albany.  To  his  heir,  George,  Lord 
Strangford  bequeathed  the  sounding  title  (a  tin  kettle 
tied  to  him,  the  last  lord  called  it),  the  brilliant 
tongue,  the  ready  pen;  a  powerful  combination,  yet 
powerless  to  bring  him  to  either  the  happiness  or  the 
fame  that  his  rich  nature  craved  and  his  talents 
promised.  In  the  sum  of  man's  misery  the  disillusions 
of  parents  must  largely  bulk,  a  sorrow  that  must  go 
mostly  unspoken;  and  the  relations  between  this 
father  and  son  are  saved  from  ranking  as  unmitigated 
tragedy  only  by  Disraeli's  appearance  in  the  midst 
of  them. 

When  Disraeli  said  to  "Hibernian"  Strangford, 
"Oh,  my  lord,  you  always  say  agreeable  things,"  he 
seems  almost  to  imply  a  doubt  of  the  agreeable  man's 
sincerity:  it  is  our  melancholy  manner  in  a  world 
wherein  we  look  on  our  fellows  as  enemies  until  they 
have  proved  themselves  to  be  our  friends.     Whether 

67 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

Disraeli  was  instinctively  led  to  hold  Lord  Strangf ord 
guilty  until  he  proved  his  innocence,  one  does  not 
know;  but  this  was  that  Lord  Strangf  ord  who,  as  the 
father  of  George  Smjthe,  was  thus  addressed,  eight 
years  later,  by  the  father  of  Lord  John  Manners : 

"I  lament  as  much  as  you  do  the  influence  which 
Mr.  Disraeli  has  acquired  over  several  of  the  young 
British  senators''  (which,  by  the  way,  he  would  hardly 
have  called  them  had  Disraeli  not  taught  the  world 
the  phrase),  "and  over  your  son  and  mine  especially. 
I  do  not  know  Mr.  Disraeli  by  sight,  but  I  have 
respect  only  for  his  talents,  which  I  think  he  sadly 
misuses." 

Again:  "It  is  grievous,"  writes  the  Duke  of  Rut- 
land to  a  confederate  thinker,  "that  two  young  men 
such  as  John  and  Mr.  Smythe  should  be  led  by  one  of 
whose  integrity  of  purpose  I  have  an  opinion  similar 
to  your  own,  though  I  can  judge  only  by  his  public 
career.  The  admirable  character  of  our  sons  only 
makes  them  the  more  available  by  the  arts  of  a  de- 
signing person."  Young  England  was  under  the  sus- 
picion of  the  old  Tory.  The  Radical  hoof  was  recog- 
nized whenever  Disraeli  kicked  up  his  heels,  as,  for 
instance,  at  the  Manchester  Athenaeum.  Lord 
Strangford,  able  to  report  to  King  Ernest  of  Hanover 
that  he  had  placed  the  ban  on  George's  Disraelitish 
doings,  received  royal  congratulations.  The  King 
wrote:  "Rejoiced  am  I  indeed,  not  only  for  your  sake, 
but  for  the  sake  of  George  Smythe  himself,  that  his 
good  sense  has  led  him  to  abandon  what  is  termed 
'Young  England.'     I  always  felt  sure  that  a  young 

68 


THE   "Sri>ENDlD   FxVILUllE " 

man  of  such  rising  abilities  would  soon  wake  out  of 
bis  dreams  and  see  tbe  folly  of  being  led  by  doctri- 
naire's rubbish  and  young  men  who,  self -conceited, 
think  that  they,  by  inspiration,  know  more  than  their 
fathers,  who  have  been  experienced  long  ere  they" — 
he  means  the  sons — "were  begotten."  The  King's 
joy  was  not  destined  to  endure;  for  though  George 
Smj'the  had  promised  to  talk  no  fancy  politics  at 
Manchester,  he  talked  nonsense  of  another  sort,  if  we 
take  the  opinion  of  King  Ernest,  who  "can  not  under- 
stand what  is  meant  by  attempting  to  turn  mechanics 
into  poets  and  philosophers,"  and  who  disapproves 
of  institutes  likely  "to  make  the  lower  orders  too  big 
for  their  boots" — boots  at  least  are  allowed  them  in 
an  allegory. 

Of  this  "splendid  failure,"  as  his  kinsman,  Lord 
Lyttelton,  called  him,  we  have  a  sort  of  synoptical 
confession,  more  erratic  but  not  less  candid  than  any 
confession  of  St.  Augustine's,  in  his  own  letters  to 
his  father.  His  father  had  been  lax  and  severe  with 
him  in  turn;  and  a  paternal  hobbj^,  the  repurchase 
of  some  of  the  family  estate  in  Kent,  left  the  school- 
boy George  almost  a  beggar,  to-day  for  a  sovereign, 
to-morrow  for  some  of  his  father's  old  clothes.^  A 
mercenary  marriage  was  part  of  the  scheme  of  life 
which  Lord  Strangford  had  devised  for  the  son;  and 
tlio  son  stumbled,  instead,  into  love  affairs  which  left 

'  Among  the  items  which  George  Smythe  had  set  down  in  his  schoolboy 
budget  in  apology  for  an  expenditure  of  nearly  ten  shillings  a  week,  over  a 
period  of  ten  months,  were  boots,  haircutting,  and  postage.  A  later  member 
for  Canterbur}',  Mr  Henniker  Heaton,  was  to  avenge  his  predecessor,  liter- 
ally to  the  uttermost  penny ^  by  forcing  on  the  Post  Office  the  Imperial  Penny 
Postage. 

G9 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

him  bankrupt  in  all  credit.  George  was  very  tall, 
very  strong,  very  handsome,  very  talented;  and  when 
he  left  Eton  to  read  with  Julius  Hare,  his  father  saw 
what  he  had  made,  and  said  that  it  was  good.  "No 
one  has  a  finer  spirit  or  a  better  heart  than  George." 
But  w^ithin  a  year  that  same  pen  sets  down:  "He 
wants  application,  ambition  and  all  those  natural 
affections  through  which  youth  is  capable  of  being 
influenced." 

George  Smythe's  kinsman  and  godfather,  the 
Duke  of  Northumberland,  subsidized  his  education  at 
Cambridge.  His  own  incisive  record  stands:  "With 
talent,  high  spirit,  courage,  a  spice  of  that  genius 
which  borders  upon  madness,  I  was  given,  as  became 
my  rank  and  not  my  fortune,  a  noble  education,  by 
the  monstrous  caste  system  of  the  English  universi- 
ties. The  associate  of  men  who  could  spend  a  pound 
with  less  inconvenience  than  I  could  spend  a  shill- 
ing, ...  I  was  not  to  be  outdone,  and  got  in- 
volved in  debt.  I  took  my  degree,  one  which,  if  utterly 
unworthy  of  my  talents,  was  yet  no  proof  that  I  did 
not  read,  and  hard,  too.  ...  I  came  up  to  Lon- 
don with  my  boyhood  over,  with  extravagant  habits, 
and  owing  about  £1,200.  As  if  the  devil  was  deter- 
mined to  let  loose  upon  me,  when  once  well  out  of 
my  depth,  every  wave  in  the  river  of  damnation,  I 
turned  my  thoughts  to  Parliament,  Canterbury." 
That  was  in  1841,  when  George  Smythe,  not  yet 
twenty-two,  carried  his  election  for  the  constituency 
with  which  his  ancestors,  the  Sidneys  of  Penshurst, 
had  been  long  associated;  and  the  seat,  which  was  cal- 

70 


1 


THE     'SPLENDID    FAILURE" 

culated  to  cost  only  £2,000,  cost  over  £7,000.  "I  had 
brought  ruin  upon  you"  (he  tells  his  father),  "upon 
my  sisters,  upon  myself.  Moreover,  with  my  Cam- 
bridge debts,  and  with  a  petition  hanging  over  my 
head,  my  position  was  anything  but  enviable.  It 
was  in  this  situation,  weighed  down  by  a  sense  of  all 
the  mischief  I  had  done,  that  I  tried  to  speak.  I  broke 
down,  signally  and  miserably,  my  nerves  going  with 
a  sort  of  crash.  What  a  position!  I  might  have  re- 
covered myself,  but  this  is  not  an  heroic  age,  and  I 
took  to  drinking  as  an  opiate  and  an  anodyne.  Then 
came  other  mischiefs.  I  thought  one  way  the  winning 
way  in  politics;  you  thought  another;  and  my  life  was 
an  incessant  wear  and  tear — shame,  abuse,  the 
world's  scorn  environing  me  on  every  side.  What 
wonder,  then,  that  my  nervous  system  has  never  re- 
covered those  j^ears  of  '41  and  '42." 

So  wrote  George  Smythe  to  his  father  from  Venice 
in  1846.  So  he  wrote,  and  his  words  stand  as  the 
scored  and  underlined  commentary  of  his  father's 
mean  suspicions  of  the  Disraeli  influence:  a  commen- 
tary only  too  crushing  in  its  completeness.  Disraeli 
was  for  George  Smythe  the  heaven-sent  leader  and 
savior,  had  his  family  but  known.  He,  too,  with 
debts  had  entered  Parliament  and  failed  in  a  first 
speech,  and  he  had  ready  for  George  Smythe  a  recipe 
which  included  neither  drinks  nor  drugs.  This 
doubted  Disraeli  was  he,  let  us  recall,  who  had  held 
fast,  through  good  report  and  ill,  to  that  Nationalist 
creed  wliicli  was  able  to  rouse  in  young  men,  left  to 
their  own  fresh  impulses,  a  redeeming  enthusiasm; 

71 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

that  Disraeli  whose  "designs''  were  distrusted  by  a 
father  frankly  shown  to  be  here,  with  callous  oppor- 
tunism, in  search  of  the  "winning  side." 

For  the  rest,  George  Smythe  crossed  his  father 
once  more  in  refusing  to  make  matrimonial  quarry  of 
an  heiress  to  restore  his  fortunes.  He  delivered  a 
few  brilliant  speeches,  and  wrote  a  few  brilliant 
sketches,  so  Disraelian  that  Disraeli  was  able  to  put 
some  of  their  passages  into  the  mouths  of  his  heroes, 
and  none  detect  the  difference  of  tone.  He  published 
his  Historic  Fancies,  and  he  produced  a  novel,  Angela 
Pisani,  a  medley  of  history  and  of  sentiment,  remark- 
able perhaps  for  the  Napoleon-worship  of  which 
George  Smythe  may  be  called  a  pioneer  among  Eng- 
lishmen; remarkable,  too,  and  self-revealing  in  its 
presentation  of  the  innate  love  of  virtue  in  the  heart 
of  the  heroine,  unsupported  by  a  will-power  of  the 
brain.  He  challenged  Roebuck,  committing  thereby 
a  breach  of  privilege,  but  no  breach  of  the  peace;  he 
was  praised  by  Peel,  but  he  called  the  fair  words  of 
his  leader  "rancid  butter,"  and  made  no  headway  with 
the  Foreign  Office  under-secretaryship  entrusted  to 
him.  He  attracted  Brougham's  attention  by  his 
foreign  policy  articles  in  the  Morning  Chronicle,  also 
the  friendship  of  Faber — which  he  quoted  as  a  testi- 
monial when  nearly  all  else  was  gone  from  him;  and, 
two  years  after  his  succession  to  his  father's  peerage 
in  1855,  he  died  of  consumption — in  all  senses  con- 
sumed away;  one  who  had  summed  himself  up:  "My 
life  has  been  made  up  of  two  blunders — I  am  a  failure 
and  I  know  it." 

72 


UNIVERSITY    ; 

^L°r^nv^HE   "SPLENDID   FAILURE" 

Yet  not  wholly;  for  he  helped  to  create  Coningsby, 
and  he  sat — to  some  purpose  at  last — for  George 
Waldershare  in  Endymion: 

"He  was  a  young  man  of  about  three  or  four 
and  twenty  years"  (in  the  early  days  of  Young  Eng- 
land): "fair,  with  short  curly  brown  hair  and  blue 
eyes;  not  exactly  handsome,  but  with  a  countenance 
full  of  expression,  and  the  index  of  quick  emotions, 
whether  of  joy  or  of  anger.  He  was  one  of  those  vivid 
and  brilliant  organizations  which  exercise  a  peculiarly 
attractive  influence  in  youth.  He  had  been  the  hero 
of  the  Debating  Club  at  Cambridge,  and  many  be- 
lieved in  consequence  that  he  must  become  Prime 
Minister.  .  .  .  Waldershare  was  profligate  but 
sentimental;  unprincipled  but  romantic;  the  child  of 
whim  and  the  slave  of  imagination  so  freakish  and 
deceptive  that  it  was  almost  impossible  to  foretell 
his  course.  He  was  alike  capable  of  sacrificing  all  his 
feelings  to  worldly  considerations  or  of  forfeiting  the 
world  for  a  visionary  caprice." 

And  of  his  talk:  "It  w^as  a  rhapsody  of  fancy,  fun, 
knowledge,  anecdote,  brilliant  badinage — even  pas- 
sionate seriousness.  Sometimes  he  recited  poetry, 
and  his  voice  was  musical;  and  when  he  had  attuned 
his  companions  to  a  sentimental  pitch,  he  would  break 
into  mockery,  and  touch  with  delicate  satire  every 
chord  of  human  feeling.'' 

Cioorgo  Smythe,  misunderstood  by  his  father,  was 
sanely  understood  at  last:  all  the  Jekyll  in  him,  all 
the  Hyde.  Disraeli,  speaking  of  him  by  name  in  his 
General  Preface,  written  more  than  a  dozen  years 

73 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

after  his  friend's  doom,  hardly  did  more  than  abbre- 
viate his  novelist  sketch:  "George  Smythe,  after- 
ward seventh  Lord  Strangford,  a  man  of  brilliant 
gifts,  of  dazzling  wit,  infinite  culture,  and  fascinating 
manners.  His  influence  over  youth  was  remarkable; 
he  could  promulgate  a  new  faith  with  graceful 
enthusiasm." 

So  much  it  seems  desirable  to  say  of  one  of  the 
few  men  who  influenced  Disraeli  who  influenced  the 
nation.  George  Smythe  has  a  second-hand  fame;  he 
is  a  part  of  the  power  behind  the  Disraelian  throne. 
And  for  the  scolding  sixth  Viscount,  who  did  not 
ahvai/s  say  agreeable  things,  there  is  secured  a  certain 
third-hand  immortality  as  the  father  of  the  man  who 
was  Disraeli's  friend.  The  revenges  of  Time  are  in- 
exorable. 

"The  Evelyns  have  always  had  good  mothers." 
Writing  to  his  sister  in  the  September  of  1843,  Dis- 
At  the  Deep-  raeli  mentions  that  he  and  Mrs.  Disraeli 
^^"^-  have  just  returned  from  a  most  agreeable 

visit  to  Deepdene:  "One  night  I  sat  next  to  Mrs.  Eve- 
lyn of  Wotton,  a  widow;  her  son,  the  present  squire, 
there  also;  a  young  Oxonian  and  full  of  Young  Eng- 
land." Young  England  was  then  beginning  to  attra(  t 
the  smiles  of  the  press  as  a  new  party,  and  some 
serious  sympathy  in  college  halls. 

Mr.  John  Evelyn  of  Wotton  lives  to  tell  with  un- 
touched vivacity  the  tale  of  that  meeting.  He  re- 
members that  he  often  went  in  his  vacations  to  the 
Deepdene,    where    his    neighbor,    Mr.    Henry    Hope, 

74 


AT   THE   DEEPDENE 

played  the  part  of  a  hospitable  Msecenas  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Young  England  party  in  those  glades  and 
galleries  the  dedication  of  Coningshy  commemorated 
in  1844.  There  he  met  George  Smythe,  M.P.,  reputed 
hero  of  Coningshy,  twenty-five  years  of  age  in  that  year 
1843  (as  also  was  Lord  John  Manners),  and  Baillie 
Cochrane,  M.P.,  the  Buckhurst  of  the  same  novel.  At 
the  Deepdene,  too,  he  met,  oftener  than  her  husband, 
Mrs.  Disraeli,  whom  he  recalls  as  remarkably  girlish 
in  manner,  considering  that  she  was  in  her  fifties.  On 
this  single  occasion  of  his  meeting  there  with  Dis- 
raeli, he  was  present  only  at  dinner,  and  from  across 
the  table  he  watched  his  mother  and  Disraeli  making 
good  talk  together.  Driving  home  to  Wotton  under 
the  stars,  he  asked  her  if  Disraeli  had  said  anything 
memorable.  She  answered  with  pride  that  he  had 
said:  "The  Eveljms  have  always  had  good  mothers." 
Her  son,  smiling,  said:  "That  was  a  safe  remark  to 
make  to  you,  mother;  but  I  hardly  think  he  can  be 
so  conversant  with  the  annals  of  a  quiet  family  like 
ours  as  the  statement  seems  to  imply."  All  the  same, 
Disraeli  spoke,  in  part  at  least,  by  the  book — by  the 
book  in  which  John  Evelyn  the  Diarist  pays  filial 
tribute  to  the  woman  from  whose  sighs  he  derived 
his  own  breath  of  life. 

"Do  you  think  Dr.  Newman  will  be  able  to  hold 
his  ground  at  Oxford?"  This  question  was  put  by 
Disraeli  at  Deepdene  to  the  "young  Oxonian  and  full 
of  Young  England''  on  the  occasion  in  question. 
After  dinner,  and  when  the  men  were  about  to  join 
the    ladies    in    the   drawing-room,    Disraeli    stepped 

75 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

round  to  him  with  a  query  that  showed  him  alert  to 
acquire  the  living  knowledge  of  which  his  books  bore 
witness;  discerning  (as  it  here  happened)  in  putting 
the  right  question  in  the  right  quarter;  and  ready,  as 
usual,  to  consort  with  the  new  generation.  Dr.  New- 
man held  his  own  for  just  two  years  longer;  and  Dis- 
raeli's regret  at  his  going  to  Rome  was  expressed  a 
generation  later  when  he  spoke  of  it  in  the  General 
Preface  to  his  novels,  as  dealing  the  Anglican  Church 
a  blow  under  which  she  still  reeled.  He  pronounced 
it  to  be  "a  blunder."  The  phrase,  in  Newman's  ears, 
must  have  smacked  of  Downing  Street  complacency; 
for  he  hit  out  at  Disraeli  with  the  opinion  that  the 
politician  could  be  expected  to  view  things  other 
than  merely  politically  as  little  as  a  chimpanzee  could 
be  expected  to  give  birth  to  a  human  baby:  a  division, 
by  inference,  between  politics  and  religion  which  at 
least  two  modern  Pontiffs  (and  Disraeli  with  them) 
repudiate  and  condemn. 

When  Mr.  Evelyn,  undergraduate  no  longer,  was 
returned  to  Parliament  for  West  Surrey  in  18-19,  Dis- 
raeli, remembering  the  meeting,  sent  him  a  short  note 
of  congratulation.  But  though  Mr.  Evelyn  sat  among 
his  supporters  in  the  House,  and  attended  Mrs.  Dis- 
raeli's crushes  at  Grosvenor  Gate,  he  had  no  further 
converse  with  Disraeli.  The  case  is  typical,  and  is 
worth  a  mention  as  explaining  some  of  the  diflficulties 
of  a  Disraeli  biographer.  Mr.  Evelyn  had  for  a  col- 
league Mr.  Henry  Drummond,  one  of  the  numerous 
members  of  the  party  who  showed  a  rather  open  aver- 
sion from  its  great  educator — masters,  for  one  thing, 

76 


SrORT   AND   POLITICS 

are  rarely  popular  with  pupils.  Possibly  Mr.  Evelyn 
was  classed  with  his  colleague  by  Disraeli,  aud,  if  so, 
unjustly.  The  fact  remains  that,  for  one  reason  or 
another,  Disraeli  had  little  or  no  private  intercourse 
with  numbers  of  men  who  were  brought  into  close 
public  association  with  him.  He  became  absorbed  in 
the  public  service;  and,  with  party  and  state  secrets 
in  his  keeping,  he  was  too  discreet  to  form  many  in- 
timacies. These,  such  as  they  were,  were  kept  in 
later  life  for  women  like  Lady  Bradford  and  Lady 
Chesterfield,  in  whom  his  trust  was  entire.  But  that 
early  meeting  with  the  unconventional  Tory  leader 
had  its  distinguishing  influence  on  the  future  opinions 
of  the  young  man. 

"It  is  the  Blue  Ribbon  of  the  Turf."  The  phrase 
(sometimes  quoted  as  Lord  George  Bentinck's)  was 
Sport  and  characteristically  Disraeli's,  coined  by 
Politics.  j^jj^  jjj  2848  on  an  occasion  of  which  his 

pen  has  left  the  record: 

"The  day  after  the  Derby,  the  writer  met  Lord 
George  Bentinck  in  the  library  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. He  was  standing  before  the  bookshelves  with- 
a  volume  in  his  hand,  and  his  countenance  was  greatly 
disturbed.  His  resolutions  in  favor  of  the  Colonial 
Interest  after  all  his  labors  had  been  negatived  by 
the  Committee  on.  the  22nd,  and  on  the  24th  his  horse, 
Surplice,  whom  he  had  parted  with  among  the  rest 
of  his  stud,  solely  that  he  might  pursue  without  dis- 
traction his  labors  on  behalf  of  the  great  interests 
of  the  country,  had  won  that  paramount  and  Olym- 

77 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

pian  stake  to  gain  which  had  been  the  object  of  his 
life.  He  had  nothing  to  console  him,  and  nothing  to 
sustain  him  except  his  pride.  Even  that  deserted  him 
before  a  heart  which  he  knew  at  least  could  yield 
him  sympathy.    He  gave  a  sort  of  superb  groan: 

"  'AH  my  life  I  have  been  trying  for  this,  and  for 
what  have  I  sacrificed  it?'  he  murmured. 
"It  was  in  vain  to  offer  solace. 
"  'You  do  not  know  w^hat  the  Derby  is?'  he  moaned 
out. 

"  'Yes,  I  do;  it  is  the  Blue  Ribbon  of  the  Turf.' 
"  'It  is  the  Blue  Ribbon  of  the  Turf,'  he  slowly  re- 
peated to  himself,  and  sitting  down  at  the  table,  he 
buried  himself  in  a  folio  of  statistics." 

Though  Disraeli  ranks  not  among  wearers  of  the 
blue  ribbon  of  the  Garter  who  won  "the  Blue  Ribbon 
of  the  Turf,"  he  had  had  a  moment's  dream  of  that 
double  eminence.  About  half  a  dozen  years  before 
this  interview  he  took  a  half-share,  Lord  George 
Bentinck  the  other,  in  a  highly  bred  filly  called  Kit- 
ten, a  daughter  of  Bay  Middleton,  a  Derby  winner, 
and  of  a  winner  of  the  Oaks.  This  pedigree  was  pro- 
lific of  hopes  never  to  be  realized.  Kitten  was  too 
light  in  the  forelegs  to  stand  training  even  for  a  two- 
year-old  stake  over  a  half-mile  course;  and  Lord 
Beaconsfield  escaped  the  temptation  to  become  the 
owner  of  a  racing  stable.  What  would  have  hap- 
pened, had  he,  as  well  as  the  fourteenth  Earl  of 
Derby,  been  a  racing  man?  At  a  political  crisis  in 
1850,  when  it  was  the  fortunes  of  the  Tory  party  that 
were  at  stake,  Disraeli  had  to  write  from  Hughenden: 
•  78 


"THE   DEAR   YOUNG   MEN'* 

"1  go  to  town  to-morrow  to  catch  a  council  with 
Stanley,  Hitting  between  Whittlebury  and  Good- 
wood." 

Of  one  who  was  young,  and  otherwise  interesting 
to  Disraeli,  and  who,  in  the  early  stage  of  public  office 
"The  Dear  Work,  complained  that  it  was  dry,  the 
Young  Men."  minister  Said:  "All  details  are  dry;  he 
must  not  be  discouraged,  it  is  the  same  in  every 
office.  The  main  point  is  to  get  the  first  step  on  the 
ladder." 

This  is  one  of  Disraeli's  many  sayings  of  mature 
and  late  life  evincing  his  practical  sympathies  with 
"the  New  Generation."  Remembering  his  own  "mis- 
erable youth,"  as  he  moodily  called  it  when  he  thought 
only  of  the  limitations  then  imposed  on  his  ambitions 
by  his  want  of  means,  he  went  out  of  his  way,  as  a 
minister,  to  discover  talent  in  the  young  men  about 
town  and  to  foster  and  reward  it.  In  the  nominations, 
for  official  work  he  made  in  this  spirit,  he  had  some 
failures  and  many  successes.  Mr.  Bertie  Tremaine, 
who  had  early  succeeded  to  a  large  estate  and  lived 
in  Grosvenor  Street,  "was  always  playipg  at  politics, 
and,  being  two  and  twenty,  was  discontented  that  he 
was  not  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  like  Mr.  Pitt." 
But  the  "little  master"  who  lay  in  wait  for  the  min- 
ister found  him  wary;  he  discriminated;  when  he  saw 
talent,  he  welcomed  it,  not  only  among  the  scions  of 
great  political  houses,  the  Hamiltons,  the  Lowthers, 
the  Lennoxes,  and  the  Stanhopes,  but  among  men 
who,   in  this  sense,  had  no  connections — so  that  a 

79 


BEXJAJNIIN    DISRAELI 

John  Pope  Hennessey,  for  instance,  got  at  least  his 
opportunity. 

Everybody  knows  the  panegyric  which  Sidonia 
(the  first  three  letters  of  whose  name  are  also  the  re- 
versed three  of  Disraeli's  own)  passes  on  the  achieve- 
ments of  youth — a  panegyric  which  opens  on  a  note 
of  discrimination  for  the  warning  of  succeeding  gen- 
erations of  Bertie  Tremaines: 

''Do  not  suppose  that  I  hold  that  youth  is  genius; 
all  I  say  is  that  genius,  when  young,  is  divine.  Why, 
the  greatest  captains  of  ancient  and  modern  times 
both  conquered  Italy  at  five-and-twenty.  Youth,  ex- 
treme 3'outh,  overthrew  the  Persian  Empire.  Don 
John  of  Austria  won  Lepanto  at  twenty-five.  Gaston 
de  Foix  was  only  twenty-two  when  he  stood  a  victor 
on  the  plain  of  Ravenna.  Every  one  remembers 
Conde  and  Recroy  at  the  same  age.  Gustavus 
Adolphus  died  at  thirty-eight.  Look  at  his  captains. 
Cortes  was  little  more  than  thirty  when  he  gazed  upon 
the  golden  cupolas  of  Mexico.  When  Maurice  of 
Saxony  died  at  the  age  of  thirty-two  all  Europe  ac- 
knowledged the  loss  of  the  greatest  captain  and  the 
profoundest  statesman  of  his  age.  Then  there  is  Nel- 
son, Clive.  But  these  are  great  warriors,  and  per- 
haps you  may  think  there  are  greater  things  than 
war.  But  take  the  most  illustrious  achievements  of 
civil  prudence.  Innocent  III,  the  greatest  of  the 
Popes,  was  the  despot  of  Christendom  at  thirty-seven. 
John  de'  Medici  was  a  cardinal  at  fifteen.  He  was 
Pope  as  Leo  X  at  thirty-seven.  Luther  robbed  him  of 
his  richest  province  at  thirty-five.    Take  Ignatius  Loy- 

80 


"THE   DEAR   YOUNG    MEN" 

ola  and  John  Weslej- — they  worked  with  young  brains. 
Ignatius  was  ouly  thirty  when  he  made  his  pilgrimage 
an<l  wrote  the  ISpiritual  Exercises.  Pascal  wrote  a 
great  work  at  sixteen,  and  died  at  thirty-seven  the 
greatest  of  Frenchmen.  Ah!  that  fatal  thirty-seven, 
which  reminds  me  of  Byron,  greater  even  as  a  man 
than  as  a  writer.  Was  it  experience  that  guided  the 
pencil  of  Raphael  when  he  painted  the  palaces  of 
Rome?  He,  too,  died  at  thirty-seven.  Richelieu  was 
Secretary  of  State  at  thirty-one.  Well,  then,  there 
were  Bolingbroke  and  Pitt,  both  ministers  before 
other  men  left  off  cricket.  Grotius  was  in  great 
practise  at  seventeen  and  Attorney-General  at 
twenty-four,  and  Acquaviva — Acquaviva  was  general 
of  the  Jesuits,  ruled  every  cabinet  in  Europe,  and 
colonized  America  before  he  was  thirty-seven.  That 
was  indeed  a  position!  But  it  is  needless  to  multiply 
instances.  The  history  of  heroes  is  the  history  of 
youth." 

From  a  man  at  the  end  of  his  own  thirties  came 
this  panegyric,  which  was  also  a  plea.  For  round 
about  him  had  already  gathered  men  younger  than 
himself — men  whose  youth  was  so  much  their  mark 
that  it  labeled,  if  it  did  not  brand,  them  as  tlie  leaders 
of  Young  England.  And  let  it  be  remembered  that 
Disraeli  did  not  create  that  party;  what  he  did  was  to 
recognize  it,  where  others  smiled.  For  him,  a  man — 
a  man  always — who  had  worn  waistcoats  of  so  many 
colors,  the  white  waistcoat  a  Young  Englander  in- 
vented was  no  sign  of  effeminacy.  Had  he  been  a  man 
of  smiles,  he  could  hardly  have  raised  one  at  the  ap- 
7  81 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

pellation  of  the  ''White  Waistcoat  party''  affixed  in 
easy  ridicule  to  men  of  large  views,  large  sympathies, 
and,  as  the  event  has  proved,  of  large  influence  over 
the  course  of  public  affairs.  Disraeli  became  the  ex- 
pounder of  a  creed  which  was  really  a  Cambridge 
Movement,  and  might  be  so  called  as  a  companion  to 
the  not  far  divided  Oxford  Movement  that  was  its 
contemporary.  Some  years  ago,  Professor  Saintsbury 
wrote  a  magazine  article  on  the  Young  England  Move- 
ment; and  when  he  met  Lord  Houghton  for  the  first 
time  after  its  publication  the  Monckton-Milnes  of  old 
days  said:  "I  wish  you  had  told  me  you  were  going  to 
write  that.  I  could  have  set  you  right  on  a  great 
many  things  which  nobody  knows  now  except  Lord 
John  Manners." 

Lord  Houghton,  in  answer  to  a  suggestion  that 
he  should  tell  his  story  first-hand,  said:  "Well,  I  did 
think  of  writing  something,  but  I  am  too  old  and  it 
is  too  much  trouble,"  and  the  only  relevant  point  the 
Professor  drew  from  the  old  Young  Englander  was 
the  not  new  one  to  the  knowing:  "Disraeli  knew 
nothing  at  all  about  it  at  first:  he  came  in  after- 
ward." 

On  this  and  other  points  the  authority  named  by 
Lord  Houghton  is  still  with  us,  in  venerable  old  age; 
and  in  a  communication  made  to  me  in  May,  1903, 
John,  Duke  of  Rutland,  writes:  "Lord  Houghton  was 
right.  Lord  Beaconsfield  did  not  identify  himself  at 
first  with  the  movement,  but  did  so  before  long,  and 
by  the  force  of  genius  and  longer  experience  at  once 
became  the  real  leader."    The  Oxford  Movement  had 

82 


"THE   DEAR  YOUNG   MEN" 

a  definite  day  of  birth  assij^ned  to  it  by  Newman — 
namely,  Keble's  famous  sermon  in  1833,  on  the  Na- 
tional Apostasy.  The  Cambridge  Movement  came 
into  existence  more  informally.  "It  had  no  definite 
birthday,"  the  Duke  of  Rutland  declares,  ''no  chair- 
man, no  secretary,  no  place  of  meeting;  and  consisted 
in  the  first  instance  of  a  few  young  men  who  had  been 
friends  at  Cambridge,  drawn  together  by  political  or 
ecclesiastical  sympathies."  It  went  out  of  existence 
equally  without  ceremony,  having  done  its  work. 
"When  the  great  split  occurred  in  1846,"  the  Duke 
writes,  ''Young  England  shared  in  the  disruption. 
Mr.  Disraeli,  Mr.  Augustus  Stafford,  I,  and  others  be- 
came merged  in  the  Protectionist  ranks,  and  some 
followed  Sir  Robert  Peel."  For  the  time  being,  how- 
ever, the  Young  Englanders  made  what  would  later 
have  been  called  a  Fourth  Party:  a  fact  not  to  be  ig- 
nored in  tracing  the  consistent  thread  of  Disraeli's 
political  career. 

A  member  of  Parliament  once  asked  Disraeli  if  he 
might  introduce  his  young  son  to  him,  at  the  same 
time  adding  a  request  that  the  minister  would  offer 
to  the  boy  a  few  words  of  advice  he  might  always 
remember.  Disraeli,  protesting  that  the  son  could 
learn  all  things  from  his  father,  submitted  to  say: 
"Be  amusing.  Never  tell  unkind  stories;  above  all, 
never  tell  long  ones." 

"You  can  not  say  too  many  nice  things.  I  am  in- 
ordinately vain,  and  delight  in  praise."  This  was  Dis- 
raeli's candor  to  Lady  Lamington,  whose  guest  he  was 
shortly  after  his  great  reception  at  Oxford,  in  1853, 

83 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Lady  Lamington  (the  wife  of  his  old  friend  Baillie 
Cochrane)  told  him  that  the  letters  she  got  from  un^ 
dergraduates  were  filled  with  his  praise. 

"Read  them  all  to  me,"  he  said,  when  she  paused, 
"I  like  to  hear  them  all."  Praise  from  the  young 
men  never  lost  its  savor  for  Disraeli.  Lord  Derby  had 
been  inaugurated  as  Chancellor;  but  the  receptions 
accorded  to  the  two  leaders  showed  Disraeli  to  be  the 
idol  of  Young  Oxford.  The  memory  of  that  day  of 
his  D.C.L. — the  honorary  degree  which  his  father  had 
borne  before  him — was  dear  to  him  till  the  end  of  life. 

Domestic  love — the  patrimony  of  the  Jewish  race 
— had  a  conspicuous  illustration  in  Disraeli;  and  he 
knew  even  when  he  wrote  of  schoolboy  life,  the  love 
that  two  men  of  his  race  felt  for  each  other,  passing 
the  love  of  women.  His  love  for  his  father  makes 
a  delightful  record;  there  is  nothing  quite  like  it  to 
be  found  in  the  memoirs  of  other  statesmen,  from 
Pitt  to  Macaulay  and  Gladstone.  His  brothers  he 
loved  to  serve;  once  to  the  petulance  of  Peel,  who, 
purist  as  he  proclaimed  himself  as  to  patronage,  saw 
mighty  impudence  in  the  request  for  the  post  of  clerk 
for  Ralph  Disraeli  since  it  came  from  Benjamin,  whose 
support  of  the  minister  was  not,  like  his  courage  in 
asking  the  favor,  unflinching.  This  familiar  love  of 
fathers  and  brothers  was  not  then  so  common  among 
Englishmen  as  it  now  is.  Some  sons  rarely  saw  their 
fathers,  thought  of  them  and  addressed  them  by 
formal  titles,  and  never  kissed  them.  Disraeli  was 
too  manly  to  think  that  affection  unmanned  men;  and 
in  this  regard  he  may  be  quoted  as  one  of  the  revivers 

84 


"THE   DEAR   YOUNG   MEN" 

of  masculine  frieudsbips  among  Englishmen.  "We 
are  happy  in  our  friends,''  declares  one  of  his  heroes, 
and  those  friends  were  not  women.  Horace  had  pre- 
ceded him  in  that  as  in  other  respects,  and  if  some 
might  object  that  Frederick  Faber  had  got  a  little  too 
near  the  hymnology  in  which  he  afterward  excelled 
when  he  told  his  friend,  Lord  John  Manners,  that  he 
walked  with  "a  radiance  round  his  brows  like  saints 
in  pictures,"  and  apostrophized. 

Thine  eyes  that  do  with  such  sweet  skill  express 
Thy  soul's  hereditary  gentleness, 

every  one  will  admit  that  the  growth  of  more  ro- 
mantic relations  between  persons  of  the  same  sex  has 
added  to  existence  one  of  its  most  enduring  charms — 
a  charm  against  the  melancholy  of  loneliness,  and  a 
refuge  from  the  fever  of  passion.  In  his  life,  as  in 
his  novels,  male  friends  figure:  a  goodly,  and  a  godly, 
fellowship;  far  from  it  was  the  taint  of  effeminacy. 
Disraeli  will  long  live  as  the  promoter  of  senti- 
ment, and  sentiment  wholly  wholesome  among  "the 
dear  young  men." 

Disraeli  lived  to  see  a  later  Fourth  Party  yield  a 
later  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer:  "Some  people, 
judging  young  men,  do  not  distinguish  between  what 
is  shallow  and  what  is  callow — ^^I  say  all  the  difference 
in  the  world.  When  I  first  remarked  young  Randolph 
Churchill,  he  was  callow;  but  "  (mentioning  an- 
other son  of  a  duke)  "never  was  callow,  but  only  shal- 
low, and  will  be  all  his  life."  Like  most  of  Disraeli's 
predictions,  this  last  also  has  been  remorselessly  ful- 
filled. 

85 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"Tell  So-and-so  to  come  to  see  me;  I  like  him  very 
much."  Constant  was  Disraeli's  interest  in  juniors 
who  served  him;  and  this  message  was  to  one  such, 
sent  through  a  friend,  who  adds:  "Outsiders  little 
knew  the  care  and  thought  he  always  bestowed  in 
endeavoring  to  ascertain  who  possessed  the  strongest 
qualifications  for  any  post  he  had  to  give.  As  an 
instance,  a  short  time  before  his  death,  one  of  the 
'poor  gentlemen's'  posts  in  the  Charterhouse  fell  into 
his  gift.  He  took  the  utmost  trouble  about  it,  feel- 
ing anxious  that  the  other  'poor  gentlemen'  should 
have  a  suitable  person  added  to  their  number." 

To  young  Parliamentarians:  "Never  explain."  To 
a  young  man  of  fortune  entering  Parliament:  "Look 
at  it  as  you  will,  ours  is  a  beastly  career." 

"Oh,  I  find  it  uncommonly  light."  So  said  Disraeli 
the  first  time  he  tried  on  the  heavy  robe  of  the 
Robes  of  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  (1852).    This 

0£Sce.  and  other  expressions  of  the  exhilaration 

he  felt  on  entering  high  official  life  were  preserved 
by  Mr.  George  H.  Parkinton,  who  was  clerk  to  Baron 
Parke,  and  who  did  that  most  unusual  thing  among 
men  who  met  Disraeli — used  his  ears  and  eyes  and 
kept  a  diary.  This  is  Mr.  Parkinton's  private  entry 
under  date  June  12,  1852: 

"Mr.  Disraeli,  the  new  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer, came  down  about  two  o'clock  to  be  sworn 
in.  He  was  quite  alone,  and  Davis,  the  usher,  showed 
him  into  the  judges'  private  room,  where  I  happened 
to  be  arranging  some  papers.    I  x>laced  him  a  chair, 

8G 


grosvp:nor  gatk,  now  20  park   i.axe. 

Disraeli's  town  r(si<Unco,  1839-1872. 


ROUES    OF    OFFICE 

and  said  I  would  go  and  tell  the  judges  he  had  ar- 
rived. In  a  few  minutes  they  came  in — Lord  Chief 
Baron  Pollock,  Barons  l*arke,  Alderson,  llolfe,  and 
Piatt.  All  seemed  to  know  him,  and  all  talked  and 
laughed  together.^  His  new  black  silk  robe,  heavily 
embroidered  with  gold  bullion  fringe  and  lace,  was 
lying  across  a  chair. 

"  'Here,  get  on  your  gown,'  said  Baron  Alderson; 
'you'll  find  it  monstrously  heavy.' 

"  'Oh,  I  find  it  uncommonly  light,'  said  the  new 
Chancellor. 

"  'Well,  it's  heavy  with  what  makes  other  things 
light,'  said  the  Lord  Chief  Baron. 

"  'Now,  what  am  I  to  say  and  do  in  this  perform- 
ance?' was  the  next  question. 

"  'Why,  you'll  first  be  sworn  in  by  Vincent,  and 
then  3^ou'll  sit  down  again;  and  if  you  look  to  the  ex- 
treme left  of  the  first  row  of  counsel  you  will  see  a 
rather  tall  man  looking  at  you.  That  is  Mr.  Willes 
out  of  court,  but  Mr.  Tubman  in  court,  and  you  must 
say,  "Mr.  Tubman,  have  you  anything  to  move?"  He 
will  make  his  motion,  and  when  he  sits  down  you  must 
say,  "Take  a  rule,  Mr.  Tubman,"  and  that  will  be  the 
end  of  the  affair.' 

"The  ushers  were  summoned,  and  all  marched  to 
the  bench — Baron  Piatt  as  junior  baron  first,  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli last,  immediately  preceded  by  the  Lord  Chief 
Baron.    'Mr.  Vincent,  the  Queen's  Remembrancer,  ad- 

'  Lord  riiiof  Baron  Pollock  bad  known  tlio  Chancollor  of  the  Exchequer 
as  a  yonn<;  inembor  of  Parliament  against  whom,  self-defended,  he  had  ap- 
peared with  the  Attorney  General  and  other  big-wigs  in  the  Austin  breach  of 
privilege  case. 

87 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ministered  the  ancient  oath,  in  Norman-French  I 
think,  Mr.  Tubman  (afterward  Mr.  Justice  Willes) 
made  some  fictitious  motion,  was  duly  desired  to  take 
a  rule,  and  the  Chancellor  and  barons  returned  to  the 
private  room. 

"  'Well,  I  must  say  you  fellows  have  easy  work  to 
do  if  this  is  a  specimen,'  said  Mr.  Disraeli. 

"  'Now,  don't  you  think  that,  or  you'll  be  cutting 
down  our  salaries,'  replied  one  of  the  judges. 

"'Take  care  of  that  robe,'  said  Baron  Alderson; 
'you  can  leave  it  to  your  son  when  the  Queen  makes 
him  a  Chancellor.' 

"Oh  no;  you've  settled  that  business,'  said  the 
new  Chancellor;  'you'd  decide  that  was  fettering  the 
Royal  prerogative.' 

"There  was  a  general  roar  at  this  w^itty  allusion 
to  a  very  important  case  just  decided  by  the  House 
of  Lords,  in  which  the  Peers  had  held  that  a  large 
monetary  bequest  by  the  late  Earl  of  Bridgwater  to 
his  son,  on  condition  that  he  should  obtain  the  title 
of  duke  within  a  certain  time,  was  void  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  a  fettering  of  the  Royal  prerogative.  There 
was  a  mutual  shaking  of  hands,  and  all  parties 
separated." 

To  a  Devonshire  man  whom  Disraeli  met  as  a  fel- 
low guest  of  Monckton-Milnes  at  Fryston  in  the  first 
,,     „    .        fifties:      "Do    you    know    a  mad   woman 

Mrs.  Brydges  -^ 

Wiiiyams,        named  Willyams  at  Torquay?" 

ene  ac  ress.  Disraeli,   who,    on  first   acquaintance 

with    his    future    wife,    rallied    her    as    "a    rattle 
and     a     flirt" — a     married    flirt — was    equally     un- 

88 


MRS.    BRYDGES    WILL  YAMS 

expected  in  his  reading  of  the  character  of 
Mrs.  Brydges  Willyams,  who  later  showed  her 
lunacy  by  leaving  him  her  fortune.  When  he 
put  this  query,  he  did  not  know  her,  and  the  letter 
she  had  written  to  him,  offering  homage  and  asking 
advice,  he  had  put  into  the  fire.  Luckily  for  him, 
and  her,  the  lady  possessed  some  of  the  persistency 
she  admired  in  her  hero;  and  the  letters  he  later  ad- 
dressed to  her  allow  the  opportunity  of  telling  her 
strange  story  in  another  place.  The  Fryston  guest, 
who  knew  her  only  by  reputation,  assured  the  inquirer 
that,  though  perhaps  eccentric,  she  was  certainly 
sane.  The  sequel  is  told  later  in  the  story  of  "The 
Woman  of  the  Windfall." 

"There  was  a  Palmerston."  This  new  version  of 
the  "So  passeth  the  glory  of  the  world  away"  was 
whispered  by  Disraeli  to  Henry  Bulwer  on  the  stairs 
at  Holland  House  when  Lord  Palmerston  had,  in  fact, 
received  a  check  (no  more)  in  his  career  by  his  dis- 
missal from  the  Foreign  Office.  The  confident  air  of 
the  Minister  added  to  the  jubilation  which  his  resigna- 
tion spread  among  his  opponents.  "He  reminds  one 
of  a  favorite  footman  on  easy  terms  with  his  mis- 
tress," Disraeli  had  said  of  him  long  before.  The 
easiness  of  the  Foreign  Secretary's  terms  with  his 
mistress  Queen  Victoria  was,  however,  the  cause  of 
his  dismissal ;  for  at  the  critical  time  of  the  coup  cVctat, 
Lord  Palmerston  wrote  hasty  messages  without  con- 
sulting the  Queen,  who  disapproved  them,  and  whose 
appeal  to  the  Cabinet  resulted  in  Palmerston's  with- 
drawal. 

89 


BENJA^IIN    DISRAELI 

A  common  remark  of  Disraeli's  in  his  own  and 

the  nineteenth  century's  'forties:   "I  get  duller  every 

day."     Stevenson,    dying   much   younger 

Middlingness.  .  .  . 

than  Disraeli,  was  proportionately  early 
in  coming  to  the  middle  age  that  is  marked  by  the 
middling  act,  rather  than  by  impulse;  the  age  that 
does  not  boldly  adventure,  but  "watches  and  counts." 
Stevenson  clung  to  youth,  if  only  as  an  artistic  stock- 
in-trade.  "Don't  give  in  that  you  are  aging,  and  you 
won't  age.  I  have  exactly  the  same  faults  and  quali- 
ties still;  only  a  little  duller,  greedier,  and  better-tem- 
pered; a  little  less  tolerant  of  pain  and  more  tolerant 
of  tedium." 

Disraeli,  like  most  youths  of  imagination,  dreaded 
middle  age:  "I  remember  when  the  prospect  of  losing 
my  youth  frightened  me  out  of  my  wits;  I  dreamt  of 
nothing  but  gray  hairs,  a  paunch,  and  the  gout  or  the 
gravel." 

Things  often  look  worse  in  prospect  than  they 
turn  out  to  be  on  closer  approach.  Disraeli  realized, 
with  Lord  Cadurcis,  that  "every  period  of  life  has 
its  pleasures";  and  even  when  the  gout  (alone  of  his 
list  of  presentiments)  racked  him  in  advanced  age,  he 
thought  life  still  worth  living. 

'^Nobody  is  quite  well."  That  was  Disraeli's  reply, 
late  in  life,  when  Mrs.  Duncan  Stewart  asked  him  if 
he  were  "quite  well."  "Nobody  is  quite  well"  is  per- 
haps capable  of  this  interpretation — that  health  is 
always  delicate  as  a  subject  of  inquiry;  especially 
when  the  query  implies  such  patronage  as  may  be  sus- 
pected in  a  strong  man's  query  to  a  weak  one,  or  a 

90 


MIDDLINGNESS 

young  man's  to  an  older  one.  Did  not  Queen  Victoria 
snap  a  great  ecclesiastical  dignitary's  head  off  on  her 
Diamond  Jubilee  day,  he  expressing,  with  pious 
unction,  the  hope  that  she  was  not  too  greatly 
fatigued?  "Why  should  I  be?"  she  tartly  demanded; 
for  really  he  was  only  a  few  years  younger  than  she, 
and  looked,  in  the  said  function,  far  more  "dis- 
tressed." There  is  a  certain  quality  of  irritation,  too, 
in  the  query  "How  are  you?"  extorted  at  the  dictation 
of  a  chance  meeting —  that  is  to  say,  if  people  are  ex- 
pected to  reply.  As  a  phrase  bandied  between  pass- 
ers-by, it  is  a  mere  salute;  it  exacts  no  counter-cry  ex- 
cept a  repetition  of  itself — a  barren  formula,  indeed, 
but  one  that  does  not  bore.  Disraeli's  reply  may  be 
commended  for  use  to  those  who  will  not  compromise 
themselves  by  a  boastful  admission  of  vulgar  health, 
but  have  too  much  dignity  to  enter  upon  personal  de- 
tails: that  diagnosis  which  produces  more  weariness 
and  despair  in  the  hearer  than  ever  the  utterer  ex- 
perienced. As  a  statement  of  fact,  too,  the  Disraelian 
saying  stands.  No  civilized  body  ever  is  quite  well — 
that  is  to  say,  perfectly  developed  for  all  its  multi- 
farious offices;  and  the  more  civilized,  perhaps,  the 
worst  it  must  be.  How  can  a  genus  that  is  in  trans- 
formation— shedding  hair,  teeth,  nails,  and  toes — be 
feeling  "quite  well"  in  the  process?  The  poets,  whom 
Disraeli  knew  for  our  greatest,  are  even  now  among 
their  fellows  what  the  pearl  was  popularly  believed 
to  be  among  oyster-shells — a  disease;  they  attain 
beauty  by  disaster.  As  for  philosophers,  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  used  to  assure  his  friends  that  he  "had  not 

91 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

known  a  day's  health  for  fifty  years'' — and  that  num- 
ber must  be  sixty  now. 

Despite  her  luckless  question,  Mrs.  Duncan  Stew- 
art was  reported  to  be  a  good  talker;  and  she  knew 
the  Disraelis  from  their  earlier  married  life.  "One 
day,"  she  reports,  "when  I  was  sitting  alone  in  my 
house  at  Liverpool,  a  note  of  introduction  was 
brought  in  for  me  from  Mr.  Milner  Gibson,  whom  I 
had  known  in  London,  and  the  cards  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Disraeli.  He  was  a  young  man  then,  all  curly  and 
smart,  and  his  wife,  though  much  older  than  himself, 
was  a  very  handsome,  imperial-looking  woman."  It 
is  on  the  unverified  gossip  of  this  Mrs.  Duncan  Stew- 
art that  Lady  Beaconsfield  has  been  discovered  as 
originally  a  factory-girl  whom  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis 
saw  going  to  her  work,  "beautiful  and  with  bare  feet." 
Nobody  is  quite  well-informed. 

'  Disraeli,  who  knew  railways  when  they  were  yet 
a  novelty,  never  got  over  a  certain  nervousness  about 
_      . .  ^.         catching  a  train.    "Do  not  let  me  be  late," 

Trepidations.  '^  ' 

he  said  to  his  hostess  at  the  close  of  a 
visit  to  Lamington.  "So  many  friends  say,  'You  have 
five  minutes  more,'  and  I  am  tempted  to  linger,  al- 
though I  like  to  be  at  the  station  at  least  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  before  the  time  of  starting." 

In  ways  other  than  those  of  the  rail,  Disraeli 
showed  himself  a  man  of  instant  anxieties.  A  seem- 
ingly phlegmatic  may  in  reality  be  a  very  nervous 
man.  The  "mask,"  as  Von  Angeli  called  it,  or  the 
"brazen  mask"  of  Mr.  Balfour's  ascription,  was,  in 

92 


TREPIDATIONS 

Disraeli's  case,  a  veritable  mask  to  this  extent — it 
covered  a  multitude  of  perturbations.  The  Sphinx 
hesitated,  had  its  tremors  and  palpitations  for  all  it 
looked  out  on  mankind  with  a  surface  calm.  The 
great  houses,  opening  their  portals  to  Disraeli  the 
Younger,  offered  hospitality  to  a  guest  who  was  never 
quite  at  happy  ease  among  strangers;  and,  like  his 
own  Tancred,  he  had  to  recall  his  noble  aims  and  ends 
as  he  climbed  staircases  and  heard  his  name  thrown 
from  one  servant  to  another.  The  hostess  who  heard 
it  smiled  graciously  on  a  young  man  who  seemed  im- 
perturbable enough  without,  but  was  dj^namic  with- 
in. Disraeli  had  the  nervous  man's  one  hope — 
courage.  He  did  not  fly;  he  overcame.  He  liked  to 
be  asked  to  the  Royal  Academy  Banquet;  but  on  such 
occasions  there  was  an  indigestion  under  his  plate 
in  the  slip  of  paper  containing  the  name  of  his  toast. 
His  buttoning  and  unbuttoning  of  his  coat  during  the 
stress  of  a  Parliamentary  oration,  his  handkerchief 
play,  and  half  his  gestures,  were  the  tricks  of  a  speak- 
er in  search  of  distractions  that  put  him  and  his 
audience  at  ease.  He  never  made  a  speech  of  any 
consequence  that  did  not  cost  him  a  moment  of  re- 
luctance. A  great  triumph,  too,  went  near  to  un- 
nerving him.  At  Oxford  in  1853  the  new  D.C.L.  had 
more  than  his  usual  pallor  when  he  bowed  in  response 
to  the  deafening  plaudits  of  the  undergraduates. 

An  instance  of  Disraeli's  nervous  anxiety  in  affairs 
of  State,  even  those  that  did  not  involve  a  public 
appearance,  is  supplied  by  an  incident  at  the  time  of 
his  formation  of  the  Conservative  Ministry  of  1874. 

93 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Much,  in  his  mind,  depended  on  the  adhesion  of  Lord 
Salisbury,  a  colleague  who  had  looked  on  him  askance, 
and  had  held  him  up  to  obloquy  in  the  Saturday 
Review — hence  Disraeli's  reference  to  this  "master  of 
flouts  and  jibes"  who  had  attacked  him,  he  said,  be- 
fore he  was  his  colleague,  and  after  he  was  his  col- 
league— "I  do  not  know  if  he  attacked  me  when  he 
was  my  colleague."  Lord  Salisbury  had,  moreover, 
deserted  him  at  the  critical  moment  in  both  Disraeli's 
and  his  party's  fortunes,  when  Disraeli  settled  the 
question  of  Reform,  and,  in  so  doing,  bequeathed  to 
Lord  Salisbury  the  long  tenure  of  power  he  did  not 
himself  live  to  see.  How  complete  a  convert  to  the 
principle  of  an  extended  franchise — dear  from  the 
first  to  Disraeli,  who  bided  his  time — Lord  Salisbury 
later  became,  may  be  inferred  from  his  willingness  to 
declare  war  against  the  Boers  in  order  to  gain  for 
his  countrymen  in  Johannesburg  the  privilege  he  had 
denied  to  his  countrymen  at  home.  Whether  Disraeli, 
who  had  a  high  respect  for  race,  and  who  always  felt 
grateful  to  the  Dutch  for  the  hospitality  extended  to 
his  grandfather  in  Amsterdam,  would  have  welcomed 
the  promulgation  of  Reform  by  the  mouth  of  the  can- 
non is  a  point  I  leave  to  the  pedants  of  the  Athemeum 
Club  who  used  to  spend  hours — and  tempers — in  dis- 
cussing whether  Macaulay,  if  alive,  would  rank  as  a 
supporter  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  scheme  of  ITome  Rule. 
Disraeli,  however,  bore  no  personal  ill-will;  nor 
was  it  possible  for  him  to  gratify  a  private  grudge, 
if  grudge  there  had  been,  at  the  cost  of  the  party% 
and  consequently  the  public,  interest.    Lord  Salisbury 

94 


DlSKAl^l.l  AT  Till-:  D.Vri':  OK  HIS  first  HIOCOMIXG  CHANCELLOR 
OF  THE  EXCHEQUER. 


TREPIDATIONS 

had,  therefore,  to  be  secured  for  the  Administration 
demanded  by  the  decisive  Conservative  majority  se- 
cured at  the  polls  in  1874.  From  Whitehall  Gardens 
Disraeli  wrote  a  note  to  Arlington  Street,  asking 
Lord  Salisbury  to  call  that  afternoon  at  five  o'clock. 
As  the  hour  approached,  Disraeli  felt  keen  anxiety. 
He  watched  the  clock  uneasily;  and  as  the  hand  ap- 
proached the  stroke  he  became  feverishly  restless. 
He  prescribed  for  himself  a  stroll  on  the  Embank- 
ment, and,  leaving  word  that  he  would  be  back  in  five 
minutes  and  that  Lord  Salisbury,  if  he  came  mean- 
while, was  to  be  kept,  he  paced  the  pavement,  build- 
ing castles  in  air,  fair  to  see,  only  to  demolish  them 
as  they  reached  their  crown.  Returning,  he  was  told 
that  Lord  Salisbury  had  called,  but  had  not  accepted 
the  invitation  to  wait.  This  was  torment.  He  climbed 
into  a  hansom — in  no  mood,  be  sure,  to  say  with 
Lothair  ("'leaping"  into  his),  "  'Tis  the  gondola  of 
London" — and  reached  Arlington  Street  before  Lord 
Salisburj^'s  return.  Only  a  few  minutes  longer  lasted 
the  suspense  which  the  cotitretemps  had  increased. 
Disraeli  came  away  with  the  knowledge  that  Lord 
Salisbury  would  take  office,  owning  him  chief — the 
greatest  mark  of  confidence.  Peel  had  said,  that  one 
man  could  show  toward  another. 

When,  after  the  "Peace  with  Honor"  triumph 
Lord  Salisbury  shared  with  Disraeli,  the  forces  of 
Toryism  suffered  defeat,  and  Disraeli  was  without 
what  he  called  "a  home,"  the  Salisburys  put  Hatfield 
at  his  disposal  during  one  of  their  absences  abroad. 
Disraeli  loved  its  library;  above  all,  he  valued  the  evi- 

05 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

dence  this  house-lending  gave  him  of  the  establish- 
ment of  intimate  confidence  between  him  and  the 
former  foe  of  his  own  household;  and  there,  to  the 
proud  records  of  the  Cecils,  he  added  yet  another 
item — that  of  this  peaceful  sojourn  of  his  own  beneath 
the  roof  long  associated  with  their  race. 

James    Clay,    M.P.    for    Hull:     "Well,    Disraeli, 

when  you  and  I  traveled  together  years  ago,  who 

would  ever  have  thought  that  you  would 

Memories.  nr-    •   x      o»> 

be  Prime  Minister?" 

Disraeli:  "Who,  indeed!  But  as  we  used  to  say 
when  we  were  in  the  East,  'God  is  great,'  and  now 
He's  greater  than  ever." 

The  acquaintance  between  the  Disraeli  family  and 
James  Clay  (who  was  the  son  of  a  London  merchant, 
and  educated  at  Winchester  and  Balliol)  began  early 
in  Disraeli's  and,  therefore,  in  Clay's  life — for  both 
were  born  in  the  same  year  (1804);  but  it  was  not  at 
first  a  very  smiling  attachment.  So  we  may  gather 
from  Disraeli's  phrase  on  meeting  him  unexpectedly 
in  Malta  in  1830:  "James  Clay  here,  immensely  im- 
proved." Not  that  he  need  have  been  very  low  down 
at  the  outset,  seeing  to  what  pinnacle  his  "improve- 
ment" raised  him:  "He  has  already  beat  the  whole 
garrison  at  rackets  and  billiards  and  other  wicked 
games,  given  lessons  to  their  prima  donna,  and  secca- 
tura^d  the  primo  tenore.  Really  he  has  turned  out  a 
most  agreeable  personage.  Lord  Burghersh  wrote  an 
opera  for  him  and  Lady  Normanby  a  farce.  He  dished 
Prince  Pignatelli  at  billiards  and  did  the  Russian  Le- 

96 


MEMORIES 

gation  at  ('cartel  A  man  of  discernment,  too;  for, 
conscious  of  his  own  success  as  he  was,  he  was  thus 
reported  of  by  Disraeli:  "Clay  confesses  my  triumph 
is  complete  and  unrivaled."  The  two  friends  became 
traveling  companions,  quitted  Malta  on  a  yacht 
which  Clay  hired  (''he  intends  to  turn  pirate")  and  on 
which  ("it  bears  the  unpoetical  title  of  Susan,  which 
is  a  bore")  Disraeli  and  Meredith  became  "passengers 
at  a  fair  rate,  and  he  drops  us  whenever  and  wherever 
we  like."  In  their  future  wanderings  Disraeli  con- 
tinued (it  is  not  always  so  in  such  cases)  to  find  Clay 
"a  very  agreeable  companion";  and  when  both  re- 
turned to  England  in  1831  the  comradeship  did  not 
end;  for  Disraeli  several  years  later  went  electioneer- 
ing (unsuccessfully)  in  the  North  with  his  friend,  and 
they  afterward  confronted  each  other  from  opposite 
sides  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Clay,  returned 
from  Hull  in  1847,  became  something  of  an  author- 
ity on  shipping,  and  yet  a  greater  authority  on 
whist. 

In  the  hurly-burly  of  politics  the  Tory  leader  found 
time  to  exchange  memories  of  the  rare  old  times  with 
the  Liberal  member,  to  whom  he  was  "Ben"  to  the 
end.  That  end  came  in  1873  to  Clay,  after  whom, 
during  his  fatal  illness,  the  statesman,  so  directing 
a  daily  walk  at  Brighton,  regularly  called  to  inquire. 
Of  Clay's  four  sons,  of  whom  the  world  has  heard,  the 
eldest,  Harry  Ernest  Clay  (now  named  by  Boyal  li- 
cense Ker-Seymer),  went  into  diplomacy;  and  another 
brother  had  the  rare  distinction  of  serving  as  secre- 
tary at  different  times  both  Gladstone  and  Disraeli. 
8  97 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

To  a  third,  well  known  in  society  and  as  a  playwright, 
I  must  express  my  indebtedness  for  these  memories 
of  his  father's  famous  friendship.  He  can  vaguely 
recall  dinner-table  chaff  in  which  Disraeli  says  of 
some  bill  that  it  is  "dead  as  Lazarus,"  and  Clay  re- 
torts: ''But,  Ben,  Lazarus  rose  again."  It  is  always 
an  agreeable  duty  to  note  when  loyal  sons  reserve  for 
their  fathers  all  the  appropriate  remarks. 

"When  I  was  young  and  abroad  I  met  one  of  the 
Gordons — a  Sir  Charles,  not  unlike  his  brother.  Lord 
Aberdeen,  the  Foreign  Minister,  except  that  the  fam- 
ily frigidity  of  the  Gordons  had  not  in  his  case  sub- 
sided into  sullenness." 

"If  we  must  have  wanderings  from  truth,  let  them 
at  least  be  on  agreeable  byways.  The  first  time  I 
dined  with  a  British  Governor  was  at  Gibraltar,  and 
on  that  occasion  the  hostess  said  that  she  was  un- 
well, but  made  the  effort  to  come  to  table  on  my 
account.  I  knew  it  was  a  fib.  Yet,  over  decades  of 
years,  I  still  recall  as  a  true  kindness  her  ladyship's 
flattering  falsity.  Lying  is  a  crime  only  where  it  is 
a  cruelty." 

To  a  bachelor,  of  whom  he  asked,  "Where  do  you 
live  now?"  and  who  replied  that  he  was  what  Disraeli 
had  described  in  one  book  as  "that  true  freeman,  a 
man  in  chambers,"  and,  in  another  book  as  "the  only 
real  monarch,"  Disraeli,  with  a  revised  judgment,  re- 
plied:   "A  desolate  monarchy." 

"When  I  meet  a  man  whose  name  I  have  utterly 
forgotten,  I  say:  'And  how  is  the  old  complaint?'" 
To  one  who  asked  Disraeli  if  the  uses  of  adversity 

98 


PATRONAGE 

really  were  sweet:    "Yes,  if  the  adversity  does  not  last 
too  long." 

He  spoke  as  a  specialist:  but  even  specialists 
speak  ambiguously.  "Enough  is  as  good  as  a 
feast."  But  who,  for  any  but  himself,  shall  define  the 
"enoujrh"? 


After  listening  to  the  first  speech  made  by  Dr. 

Magee,  Bishop  of  Peterborough:    "Oho!  we  have  got 

a  customer  here!"     The  subject  of  this 

Patronage. 

bluffly  comprehensive  and  incoherent- 
ly expressive  exclamation  (of  a  kind  that  some- 
times surprised  idealists  on  the  lips  of  Dante 
Kossetti  as  well  as  of  Disraeli)  was  himself  of 
Disraeli's  appointing.  With  due  deference  to  local 
needs,  and  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  if  the  Church 
of  Rome  is  a  Church  of  Promises,  the  National  Church 
is  by  its  nature  a  Church  of  Compromises,  he  gave 
Liverpool  its  Dr.  Ryle.  Other  ecclesiastical  appoint- 
ments of  his  may  be  here  enrolled :  Dr.  Archibald  Tait 
to  Canterbury,  a  "sound  Churchman"  suited  to  his 
day,  of  whom  his  wife  playfully  reported  "he  believes 
all  Catholic  doctrine  except  the  celibacy  of  the 
clergy;"  Dr.  Jackson  to  London;  Dr.  Lightfoot  to  Dur- 
ham, gratified  by  the  advent  of  a  scholar;  Dr.  Atlay 
to  Hereford;  Dr.  Wordsworth  to  Lincoln;  Dr.  Thorold 
to  Rochester,  a  prelate  who  had  Mr.  Labouchere  for 
a  brother-in-law  and,  an  only  less  irrelevance,  a  con- 
vert to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  for  his  only  son? 
Dr.  Claughton  to  St.  Albans;  Dr.  Basil  Jones  to  St. 
David's;  Dr.  M^Lagan  to  Lichfield;  Dr.  Rowley  Hill 

99 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

to  Sodor  and  Man,  and  Dr.  Benson  to  Truro — the 
future  holder  of  the  See  of  Canterbury. 

To  York  Deanery  Disraeli  sent  Dr.  Purey-Cust;  to 
Lichfield  Dr.  Bickersteth — both  of  them  Archdeacons 
of  Buckingham;  Dr.  llerbert  to  Hereford;  Dr.  Stewart 
Perowne  to  Peterborough;  Dr.  Burgon  to  Chichester; 
Dr.  Grantham  Yorke  and  Lord  A.  Compton  to  Worces- 
ter; Dr.  Boyle  to  Salisbury.  To  a  canonry  at  St.  Paul's 
he  presented  Dr.  Gregory;  to  a  canonry  at  Oxford,  Dr. 
Bright;  to  a  canonry  at  York,  Dr.  Forester,  of  a  family 
long  known  to  him.  The  list,  though  long,  justifies 
itself;  and  other  names  might  be  added  in  illustra- 
tion of  the  discretion  of  Disraeli's  nominations:  nearly 
all  criticized  and  contested  at  the  time  of  their 
making;  and  all  alike  approved,  perhaps  only  too  in- 
discriminately, when  death,  in  this  case  or  that,  si- 
lenced the  clamor  of  individual  rivalry. 

The  memory  of  a  Derby-Disraeli  Church  appoint- 
ment for  which  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  took 
the  moral  responsibility  in  the  House  of  Commons 
was  recalled  lately  (1903)  by  the  death  of  Lady  Har- 
riet Duncombe,  an  old  acquaintance  of  Disraeli's,  in 
her  ninety-fourth  year.  She  was  Lady  Harriet  Doug- 
las, daughter  of  the  fifth  Marquis  of  Queensberry, 
when  she  married  the  Rev.  and  Hon.  (they  used  to 
place  it  "Hon.  and  Rev."  in  those  days)  Augustus 
Duncombe,  whose  subsequent  appointment  as  Dean 
of  York  was  wrangled  over  in  the  House  of  Commons 
as  a  purely  political  one.  But  if  the  niew  Dean  did 
not  rank  as  a  Father  of  the  Church,  he  was  much 
more  than  the  mere  son  of  a  peer  who  supported  the 

100 


PATRONAGE 

Government.  No  Dean,  at  the  end  of  a  long  rule, 
was  ever  so  popular  in  York;  and  having  inherited, 
though  a  younger  son,  a  large  fortune  from  his 
father  (there  was  once  a  saving  Lord  Feversham), 
he  was  able  to  devote  the  whole  of  his  stipend  as 
Dean  to  the  preservation  of  the  splendid  minster's 
fabric.  Nor  has  that  great  work  gone  unremembered 
in  the  bequests  of  ladies  of  his  family.  Disraeli  lived 
to  see  the  impugned  appointment  justified,  not  only 
by  his  man's  career,  but,  as  nearly  always  happened 
to  him  in  such  cases,  by  converted  public  opinion. 
If  he  sought  a  more  mundane  reward,  he  must  have 
found  it  later  in  the  mere  sight  of  those  grand-nieces 
of  the  Dean,  who,  at  the  end  of  his  life,  took  the 
town  with  beauty. 

Near  to  the  close  of  his  official  life  (1877)  Lord 
Beaconsfield  gave  to  a  clergyman's  son  an  appoint- 
ment over  which  the  customary  hue  and  cry  was 
raised.  This  was  a  scandal — barefaced,  undeniable — 
the  removal  of  Mr.  Digby  Pigott  from  the  War  Office 
to  be  Comptroller-General  of  Stationery,  with  the 
modest  salary  of  £800  a  year.  For  the  transfer  of  a 
civil  servant  from  one  department  to  another  he  had 
abounding  precedents.  The  grievance  lay  elsewhere 
— that  Mr.  Pigott's  father  had  once  upon  a  time  been 
Vicar  of  Hugtienden.  Mr.  John  Holms  startled  Hack- 
ney and  the  House  of  Commons  with  the  dark  dis- 
covery; and  the  belief  was  hinted  that  the  vicar,  with 
his  family,  had  "rendered  valuable  political  assistance 
to  the  Premier."  Those  were  the  years  of  the  silence 
of  Lord  Beaconsfield.    He  relied  on  the  general  good 

101 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

sense  and  good  feeling  of  the  Islanders — sometimes, 
as  now  for  a  moment,  in  vain.  The  opposition  mus- 
tered, and  in  a  House  at  less  than  half  power  on  the 
Government  side,  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Digby 
Pigott  was  censured  by  156  against  152  votes — a  hos- 
tile majority  of  four.  The  new  Comptroller  resigned; 
but  Lord  Beaeonsfield  refused  to  let  him  go.  The 
case  was  now  one  of  personal  justice;  and  he  could 
not  let  the  folly  of  the  Commons  interfere.  The  House 
of  Lords  now  became  the  scene  of  the  farce;  and  there 
one  actor  invested  it  at  once  with  dignity.  Answer- 
ing the  suggestion  (enforced  by  the  vote  of  many  men 
who  had  dispensed  public  patronage  to  their  sons, 
brothers,  and  nephews  and  cousins)  that  this  promo- 
tion had  been  controlled  by  private  family  friendship, 
Lord  Beaeonsfield  was  able  to  say  that  Mr.  Digby 
Pigott  had  been  recommended  for  the  post  by  an  old 
public  office  hand. 

"I  do  not  know  Mr.  Digby  Pigott,"  the  Premier 
added,  "even  by  sight.  Thirty  years  ago  there  was 
a  vicar  in  my  parish  of  the  name  of  Pigott,  and  he 
certainly  was  the  father  of  Mr.  Digby  Pigott.  Shortly 
after  I  went  to  that  property,  Mr.  Pigott  resigned  his 
living  and  went  to  a  distant  county.  With  regard  to 
our  intimate  friendship  and  his  electioneering  assist- 
ance, all  I  know  of  his  interference  in  county  elections 
is  that  before  he  departed  from  the  County  of  Buck- 
ingham he  registered  a  vote  against  me." 

The  comedy  was  at  an  end:  "the  defense  was  com- 
plete," acknowledged  the  Daily  News.  But  it  was  one 
of  the  many  comedies  in  which  Disraeli  played,  but 

102 


A   CONSTITUTIONAL   PRELATE 

was  not  the  comedian,  and  for  which  our  Islanders, 
the  most  easily  amused  in  the  world,  looking  back- 
ward, can  find  no  laugh. 

To  Dr.  Kyle,  on  his  appointment  as  Bishop 
of  Liverpool:  "I  think,  sir,  you  have  a  good  con- 
A  Constitu-      stitution." 

tionai  Prelate.  jjj  earlier  days,  Disraeli  set  forth  with 
biting  satire  the  motives  governing  the  choice  of 
the  bishops:  "It  began  to  be  discerned  that  the 
time  had  gone  by  for  bishoprics  to  serve  as  appanages 
for  the  younger  sons  of  great  families.  The  Arch- 
Mediocrity  [Peel]  who  then  governed  this  country 
was  impressed  with  the  necessity  of  reconstructing 
the  Episcopal  Bench  on  principles  of  personal  dis- 
tinction and  ability.  But  his  notion  of  clerical  capac- 
ity did  not  soar  higher  than  a  private  tutor  who  had 
suckled  a  young  noble  into  university  honors;  and  his 
test  of  priestly  celebrity  was  the  decent  editorship 
of  a  Greek  play.  He  sought  for  the  successors  of  the 
Apostles,  for  the  stewards  of  the  mysteries  of  Sinai 
and  of  Calvary,  among  third-rate  hunters  after 
syllables." 

By  the  time  Disraeli  became  himself  a  bishop- 
maker,  he  knew  that  local  demands,  advanced 
through  political  channels,  must  carry  the  day. 
Hence  a  Low  Churchman  must  go  to  Liverpool,  a  city 
represented  in  Parliament  and  in  this  nomination  by 
his  colleague.  Lord  Sandon. 

The  making  of  a  bishop,  even  of  a  bishop  who 
does  not  fully  accept  the  mystic  significance  of  the 

103 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

rites  he  retains,  must  nevertheless  be  in  some  sense 
an  affair  of  mystery,  so  that  a  very  candid  relation 
of  this  Liverpool  bishop's  experiences,  made  by  him- 
self, bears  repetition.  "My  life,"  the  late  Dr.  Ryle 
said,  "has  been  a  very  curious  one.  I  was  not  brought 
up  for  the  Church.  The  last  thing  I  should  have  ex- 
pected was  that  I  should  ever  be  a  clergyman.  My 
father  was  a  wealthy  man.  He  was  a  landed  pro- 
prietor and  a  banker;  I  was  the  eldest  son,  and  looked 
forward  to  inheriting  a  large  fortune.  I  was  on  the 
point  of  entering  Parliament.  I  had  all  these  things 
before  me  till  I  was  twenty-five;  but  it  then  pleased 
God  to  alter  my  prospects  in  life  through  my  father's 
bankruptcy."  The  father,  one  supposes  (and  possibly 
the  creditors),  would  have  preferred  some  other  man- 
ifestation of  the  son's  vocation.  Moreover,  the  epi- 
sode puts  Dr.  Ryle  where  he  would  have  felt  least 
comfortable — in  line  with  Manning  and  Newman, 
both  of  whose  fathers,  by  their  business  failures,  de- 
termined the  clerical  career  for  their  sons.  The 
Bishop  continues:  "I  never  thought  that  a  man  who 
had  taken  such  a  decided  stand  as  a  Protestant  clergy- 
man, as  an  Evangelical  clergyman,  would  ever  be 
called  upon  by  the  Prime  Minister  to  take  a  different 
position.  I  always  thought  the  quiet  men,  those  who 
won't  kick  up  a  row,  those  who  could  be  trusted  to 
go  quietly  and  gently,  were  chosen.  But,  as  you  are 
aware,  I  was  offered  by  Lord  Beaconsfield  the  deanery 
of  Salisbury.  I  did  not  like  it  at  all.  I  went  to  Salis- 
bury, and  the  more  I  looked  at  it  the  less  I  liked  it. 
I  felt  like  a  dog  with  his  tail  between  his  legs.    But 

104 


A   CONSTITUTIONAL   PRELATE 

although  I  did  not  feel  comfortable,  I  felt  that  it  was 
my  duty  to  go.  But  I  was  suddenly  relieved  by  a  tele- 
gram from  Lord  Beaconsfield's  secretary  asking  me 
to  go  to  London  for  an  interview  on  a  very  important 
matter.  I  felt  it  my  duty  to  go,  and  I  saw  Lord  San- 
don,  the  member  for  Liverpool,  who  told  me  they  had 
sent  for  me  for  the  simple  purpose  of  asking  me 
whether  I  would  accept  the  bishopric  of  Liverpool. 
I  said:  'I  am  not  so  young  as  some  people.  I  am 
not  a  wealthy  man  to  take  a  new  bishopric'  He  re- 
plied: 'We  know  all  that;  we  have  made  up  our  minds 
about  that;  the  question  is.  Will  you  take  the  bish- 
opric of  Liverpool  or  not?'  I  said:  'My  lord,  I  will 
go.'  I  thought  it  was  a  clear,  plain  call  of  duty.  I 
would  much  rather  wear  out  as  Bishop  of  Liverpool 
than  rust  out  as  Dean  of  Salisbury.  Well,  I  asked 
Lord  Sandon  several  questions,  which  he  answered, 
and,  this  ended,  I  was  taken  into  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
who  gave  me  an  interview,  kind  and  courteous  as  one 
would  expect  from  that  wonderful  statesman.  He 
gave  me  excellent  advice,  which  I  hope  I  shall  never 
forget.  I  told  him  I  was  not  so  young  as  I  used  to  be, 
I  did  not  get  younger.  He  took  a  good  look  at  me 
from  head  to  foot," — and  said  the  words  which  begin 
the  paragraph,  "I  think,  sir,  you  have  a  good  consti- 
tution." 

A  great  statesman's  first  thought,  Disraeli  once 
said,  must  be  for  the  health  of  the  people;  and,  in 
this  case,  he  evidently  took  comfort  in  the  strength 
of  the  people's  Bishop.  The  words,  spoken  in  1880, 
were  amply  verified  by  the  duration  and  the  energy 

105 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

of  Dr.  Kyle's  episcopal  career.  In  this  case,  a  Bishop 
bred  a  Bishop;  the  constitutional  Bishop  at  Liver- 
pool has  supplied  an  equally  energetic  prelacy  to 
Winchester — a  double  event,  duly  noted,  one  hopes, 
as  a  double  consolation  to  the  creditors,  and  their 
descendants,  if  such  there  be,  under  the  bankruptcy 
that  brought  it  all  about.  This  digression  is  one  that 
leads  us  back  again  into  the  broad  Disraelian  path; 
and  there  you  say,  w^hat  Stevenson  had  the  luck  to 
say  when  he  came  out  of  arid  rocky  country  on  to  the 
Pacific  slope  of  woods  and  streams:  "It  is  like  meet- 
ing your  wife."  Most  of  all,  in  presence  of  Disraeli, 
even  when  sententious,  does  one  become  sensitive  to 
the  comicality  of  other  men's  conventions. 

Disraeli,  among  other  ancient  courtesies,  retained 
to  the  last  this  use  of  "Sir"  in  conversation,  especially 
with  ecclesiastics.  When  he  made  Lothair  address 
Cardinal  Grandison  with  a  "Sir"  (as  he  himself  ad- 
dressed Cardinal  Manning  in  speech  with  him),  he  was 
lectured  in  some  quarters  for  a  lapse  from  the  "My 
lord"  and  the  "Your  Eminence."  Disraeli  meant, 
and  Manning  suffered,  no  derogation.  Kings  and 
princes  are  "Sirs"  by  right — Cardinals  are  princes  of 
the  Church;  and  St.  John  addressed  an  angel,  "Sir, 
thou  knowest":  one  title  let  us  welcome  as  held  in 
common  by  a  heavenly  spirit  and  the  loin  of  Old  Eng- 
land's beef. 

"Remember,  Mr.  Dean,  no  dogmas,  no  deans" — a 
reminder  addressed  to  Dean  Stanley,  who  made  the 
most  of  his  "breadth"  to  Disraeli,  thinking,  but  quite 

106 


-PEACE   WITH    HONOR" 

mistakenly,  that  this  would  please  him.  Disraeli's 
own  feelings  about  ceremonies  and  dogmatic  teaching 
A  Greater  were  again  and  again  expressed.  "What 
that  Includes  you  call  forms  and  ceremonies,"  said  Mr. 
Lys,  the  clergyman  in  Si/hil,  who  has  all 
the  sympathy  of  his  creator,  "represent  the  devo- 
tional instincts  of  our  nature";  and,  speaking  boldly 
for  himself  at  Manchester  in  1872,  he  said: 

"I  would  wish  Churchmen,  and  especially  the 
clergy,  always  to  remember  that  in  our  Father's  house 
there  are  many  mansions;  and  I  believe  that  this  com- 
prehensive spirit  is  perfectly  consistent  with  the 
maintenance  of  formularies  and  the  belief  in  dogmas, 
without  which,  I  hold,  no  practical  religion  can 
exist." 

No,  nor  Deans  either. 

At  the  dinner-table  of  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of 
Sutherland,  after  the  close  of  the  Berlin  Conference: 
"Peace  with  "When  I  first  went  into  Bismarck's  cab- 
Honor."  inet,  his  favorite  dog  rose,  wagged  his 
tail,  and  licked  my  hand.  When  Prince  Gortschakoff 
came  in,  the  discerning  creature  recognized  the  bear 
and  nearly  made  an  end  of  him." 

Bismarck  agreed  with  his  dog.  In  these  private 
talks  the  two  men  found  themselves  in  accord,  not 
merely  on  the  necessity  for  "strong  governments,"  but 
on  a  good  many  personal  appreciations.  If  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  with  incautious  detail,  predicted  that 
Gladstone  would  die  in  a  monastery  or  a  madhouse, 
Bismarck  also  fell  into  "the  most  gratuitous  form  of 

107 

OF  The 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

human  error"  by  prophesying  that,  when  politically 
played  out,  Gladstone  would  make  a  new  stir  by 
"going  over"  to  Rome,  and,  if  he  were  a  widower, 
would  yet  be  heard  of  as  the  most  reactionary  member 
of  the  College  of  Cardinals.  In  the  Conversations  Bis- 
marck— the  Carlyle  of  practical  politics — is  reported 
as  saying:  "I  repeatedly  had  Lord  Beaconsfield  to 
spend  the  evening  with  me  during  the  Berlin  Con- 
gress. As  he  was  unwell,  he  only  came  on  condition 
of  being  alone,  and  I  thus  had  many  an  opportunity  of 
getting  to  know  him  well.  I  must  say  that  in  spite 
of  his  fantastic  novel-writing,  he  is  a  capable  states- 
man, far  above  Gortschakoff  and  many  others.  It  was 
easy  to  transact  business  with  him.  In  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  you  knew  exactly  how  you  stood  with  him; 
the  limits  to  which  he  was  prepared  to  go  were  clearly 
defined,  and  a  rapid  summary  soon  defined  matters. 
Beaconsfield  speaks  magnificent  and  melodious  Eng- 
lish, and  has  a  good  voice.  He  spoke  nothing  but 
English  at  the  Congress.  The  Crown  Princess  asked 
me  about  this  time  whether  Beaconsfield  did  not 
speak  French  very  beautifully.  I  answered  that  I 
had  not  heard  anything  of  it  till  then.  'But  in  the 
Congress?'  she  inquired  further.  'He  only  speaks 
English,'  said  I." 

To  a  friend  who  congratulated  him  on  his 
"Peace  with  Honor"  triumph  "Yes;  but  it  has  come 
too  late."  As  Sir  Stafford  Northcote  afterward 
said  of  his  attitude  at  this  period  of  his  life:  "His 
heart  was  in  the  sepulcher  of  his  wife  at  Hugh- 
enden." 

108 


THE   GOLDEN    WREATH 

[Needless  to  say,  Lord  Beaeonsfield  did  not  origi- 
nate the  ''Peace  with  Honor''  phrase.  It  was  when 
Burke  moved  his  resolution  for  conciliation  with  the 
American  colonies  that  he  said:  "The  superior  Power 
may  offer  peace  with  honor."  Whether  Lord  Beacons- 
field  had  that  phrase  in  mind,  or  coined  it  afresh,  as 
a  multitude  of  tongues  must  have  coined  it  before 
Burke  and  since,  scarcely  matters. 

"Oh,  it  is  age  that  tires  me."  Lord  Beaeonsfield 
retorted  thus  in  Berlin  when  Lord  Odo  Russell  ex- 
pressed the  fear  that  the  Congress  was  very  fatiguing. 
Lord  Odo  Russell  was  a  convert  to  the  power  and 
spirit  of  Lord  Beaeonsfield  as  a  diplomatist,  no  less 
than  was  Bismarck.  He  agreed  when  the  German 
Chancellor  said  of  Lord  Beaeonsfield:  "He  has  won- 
derful presence  of  mind;  is  versatile  and  energetic; 
lets  nothing  excite  him;  and  has  admirably  defended 
his  cause."  Not  long  after  the  Congress,  Bismarck, 
in  his  private  cabinet,  pointed  out  three  portraits  to 
a  visitor.  "There,"  he  said,  "hangs  the  portrait  of  my 
sovereign;  there  on  the  right,  that  of  my  wife;  there 
on  the  left,  that  of  Lord  Beaeonsfield."  After  the 
death  of  Lord  Beaeonsfield,  Bismarck  telegraphed  to 
Lord  Rowton,  whose  acquaintance  he  made  during 
the  Congress,  a  true  expression  of  sympathy  and 
regret. 

"You  have  now  got  what  you  desired."  So  said 
Lord  Beaeonsfield,  one  August  afternoon  in  1879,  to 
a  venerable-looking  man  who  accosted  him  in  Bond 
Street  and  introduced  himself  as  "the  unfortunate 

109 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Tracy  Turnerelli."  The  Chief,  in  those  troubled  times, 
challenged  in  the  street  by  an  ordinary  stranger. 
The  Golden  would  hardly  have  delayed  to  parley;  the 
Wreath,  secretary,  on  whose  arm  he  leant,  would 

have  lingered,  if  he  must,  to  bandy  words.  But  Tracy 
Turnerelli  was  no  ordinary  man.  He  looked  so  like  a 
philanthropist  that  he  had  an  actor's  interest  and  an 
actor's  sincerity  in  playing  the  part.  The  son  of  an 
Anglicized  Italian  sculptor  of  some  eminence,  he  had 
lived  among  artists;  and  his  travels  had  not  cured 
him  of  an  inveterate  habit  of  self-advertisement,  any 
more  than  his  marriage  with  a  Hankey  had  warned 
him  from  adventures  which  earned  him  the  added 
sobriquet  of  Pankey.  In  common  with  the  rest  of  the 
world,  I  laughed  at  his  golden  wreath;  then,  after  a 
talk  with  him,  I  mourned  the  rather.  He  was  so  plau- 
sible, that  he  perforce  deceived  himself;  his  facts 
would  not  bear  to  be  faced,  nor  his  figures  to  be 
checked.  The  tinsel  golden  wreath  which  he  devised 
for  Lord  Beaconsfield's  acceptance,  as  the  "People's 
Tribute"  of  fifty-two  thousand  pennies,  might  lead, 
somebody  suggested,  to  the  minister's  impeachment 
for  traitorous  assumption  of  a  crown.  On  that  tan- 
gent, the  impulsive  Tracy  would  tear  away:  would 
write  letters,  consult  lawyers,  imagine  himself 
brought  to  the  block,  and  dare  it;  forgetting,  the 
while,  the  real  obstacles  which  he  himself,  hardly 
witting  what  he  did,  had  laid  across  his  own  primrose 
path.  These  were  set  forth  with  a  precision  which  I, 
who  knew  the  old  man,  a  little  winced  under,  but 
perhaps  he  hardly  at  all: 

110 


No.   10   I)()^^"^■I.\■(;   s'rHi:i:i,    w  iii  1 1  ii ai,i 

Disraeli's  official   residence,    I,s71-1.SN() 


THE   GOLDEN   WREATH 

"  10,  Downing  Street,  Whitehall, 
''June  lath,  1879. 

"Sir:  Lord  Beaconsfield  desires  me  to  inform  you 
tliiit  be  has  received  and  carefully  considered  your 
letter  of  the  8th  inst.,  in  which  you  ask  him  to  name 
a  day  for  the  presentation  of  a  laurel  wreath  procured 
by  the  contributions  of  upward  of  fifty  thousand  of 
the  people,  which  have  been  collected,  according  to 
your  statement,  with  'immense  labor  and  never-yet- 
exampled  efforts.'  His  lordship  has,  moreover,  had 
before  him  the  correspondence  which  during  the  last 
five  years  you  have  addressed  to  him,  and  he  notices 
especially  your  complaint  that  your  services  have  re- 
ceived no  recognition  at  the  hands  of  the  leaders  of 
the  Conservative  party,  and  the  expression  of  your 
hope  that  'sooner  or  later  they  will  meet  with  reward.' 
Although  Lord  Beaconsfield  would  fully  appreciate 
and  value  a  spontaneous  gift  from  his  fellow-subjects 
belonging  to  a  class  in  which  he  has  ever  taken  the 
warmest  interest,  he  can  not  but  feel  that,  being  him- 
self intimately  connected  with  honors  and  rewards, 
he  is  precluded  by  the  spirit  in  which  you  have  pre- 
viously addressed  him  from  accepting  a  gift  thus  orig- 
inated, and  proffered  in  a  manner  which  he  can  not 
deem  satisfactory.  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  your 
obedient  servant, 

"Algernon  Turnor." 

Tracy  Turnerelli  was  not  crushed:  he  had  un- 
bounded elasticity.  Now  he  had  exposed  himself  as 
the  much  misunderstood  as  well  as  much  unappreci- 
ated laborer  called  to  martyrdom,  instead  of  merited 
reward.  Reward — there  was  the  rub.  A  couple  of 
months  passed  thus,  when  the  neglected  man  met  the 

111 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Minister  face  to  face.  His  own  account  needs  to  be 
supplemented,  perhaps,  by  some  such  leading  speech 
as  "The  only  reward  I  wanted  was  a  friendly  shake 
of  the  hand,"  provoking  the  reply  of  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  already  quoted:  "You  have  now  got  what  you 
desired." 

"These  words  were  addressed  to  me  yesterday 
afternoon,  by  Lord  Beaconsfield,  between  5  and  6  p.m. 
Had  they  been  addressed  to  me,  as  I  hoped,  at  the 
Crystal  Palace"  (where  the  wreath  had  been  exhib- 
ited), "or  even  in  Downing  Street,  in  the  presence  of 
the  Press,  I  should  have  been  satisfied,  and  have  re- 
quired no  more  from  the  Premier.  But  they  were  ad- 
dressed to  me  on  the  pavement  of  Bond  Street.  I  was 
coming  from  Hunt  &  Roskell's  when  a  gentlemanly 
looking  old  man,  leaning  on  the  arm  of  a  younger 
man,  passed  me.  I  had  never  before  seen  Lord  Bea- 
consfield, but  I  saw  at  a  glance  it  was  he.  I  bowed 
to  him.  He  returned  my  bow.  ^May  I  have  the  pleas- 
ure of  shaking  hands  with  you,  my  lord,'  I  said.  ^I  am 
the  unfortunate  Tracy  Turnerelli!'  His  lordship 
shook  hands  with  me  cordially — well  he  might — add- 
ing the  above  words:  'You  have  now  got  what  you 
desired.'  I  did  desire  that;  but  I  desired  more — it  was 
publicly  for  the  Premier  to  tell  the  nation  I  had  served 
him  and  the  country.  As  I  am  a  gentleman,  I  re- 
peated my  bow  and  walked  on ;  for  the  streets  are  not 
the  place  for  anything  but  civilities;  but  elsewhere  I 
would  have  added,  'I  want  more,  my  lord,  justice!  that 
Justice  I  have  asked  of  your  lordship,  of  the  Prince 
and  Princess  of  Wales,  of  the  Queen,  and  which,  in  a 

112 


"BEACON"   NOT   "BECKON" 

month,  on  a  hundred  platforms,  if  I  live  and  health 
permits,  I  intend,  after  my  summer  holiday,  to  ask 
of  the  people.'  Will  his  lordship  prevent  me  by  act- 
ing fairly  toward  me  before  the  session  is  over?  I 
know  not.  But,  whatever  I  write  and  whatever  I  say, 
I  trust  his  lordship  will  not  forget  I  treated  him  as 
a  Christian  gentleman  should  do — shook  hands  with 
him,  in  spite  of  the  injury  he  has  done  me — and  look 
to  him  to  act  in  the  same  way  to  me,  even  when  pain- 
ful words  are  being  written  and  uttered." 

So,  by  degrees,  the  golden  wreath — which  Tracy 
Turnerelli  tried  on — went  the  way  of  all  flesh — to 
Madame  Tussaud's! 

"Not  Beconsfield,  but  Beaconsfield.^^  By  one  of 
life's  little  ironies,  in  giving  up  the  mispronounced 
"Beacon,"  not  name  Disraeli,  a  name  by  which  his 
"  Beckon."  race  was  to  be  "for  ever  recognized,''  he 
alighted  on  a  title  that,  in  sound,  was  equally 
equivocal.  In  common  with  most  of  his  country- 
men. Lord  Rosebery  spoke  of  J?econsfield  (and 
indeed  old  maps,  no  less  than  the  local  and  gen- 
eral pronunciation,  have  it  Bekonsfield  and  Becens- 
field,  in  allusion  to  beeches  and  not  to  beacons)  when 
he  was  thus  corrected  by  the  husband  of  Lady  Bea- 
consfield,  she  herself  joining  in.  "I  assure  you,"  Lord 
Rosebery  has  said,  "I  was  impressed  by  those  persons 
with  a  creed  which  ^^M11  leave  me  only  with  life,  that 
the  pronunciation  is  /?rr/consfield.  not  7?rconsfield;  and 
it  would  afterward  have  required  more  courage  than 
I  possess  to  address  Lady  Beaconsfield  as  Lady 
9  113 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Beconsfield   or    Lord   Beaconsfleld   as  Lord    Becons- 
field." 

"Statesmanship  inspires  interest  longer  than  most 
things.  I  have  seen  Metternich  in  love:  some  thought 
The  Ruling  it  sublime:  I  thought  it  absurd.  But  I 
Passion.  f^j^  ^jj^  greatest  reverence  for  him  as  a 

statesman  to  the  last." 

Metternich,  the  Austrian  Premier,  sought  refuge 
here  from  the  Revolution  of  1848,  and  took  up  his 
abode  on  Richmond  Green,  in  what  Disraeli  thought 
"the  most  charming  house  in  the  world."  "It  was 
called  the  Old  Palace,"  and  had  "a  long  library,  gar- 
dens, everything  worthy  of  him.  I  am  enchanted  with 
Richmond  Green  which,  strange  to  say,  I  don't  recol- 
lect ever  having  visited  before,  often  as  I  have  been 
to  Richmond.  I  should  like  to  let  my  house  and  live 
there.  It  is  still  and  sweet,  charming  alike  in  sum- 
mer and  winter."  In  October,  1849,  Disraeli  received 
from  Metternich  "a  beautiful  and  affecting  farewell 
letter  in  time  to  embrace  him  exactly  half  an  hour 
before  he  left  England." 

The  Metternichs'  stay  at  Richmond  was  not  with- 
out an  influence  on  the  Disraelis;  for,  in  consequence 
of  her  brother's  enthusiasm.  Miss  Sara  Disraeli  set- 
tled in  the  neighborhood. 

"Your  villa  is  in  the  heart  of  the  greenland  which 
I  have  so  long  admired  and  wished  to  dwell  in.  I 
think  you  will  be  very  happy  there,"  Disraeli  wrote 
in  1850,  "and  I  shall  probably  end  my  days  as  your 


neighbor." 


114 


RACE   AND   THE   RACES 

"The  British  aristocracy,  which  the  multitude 
idealizes,  does  not  idealize,  does  uot  even  realize,  its 
Race  and  the  own  status  and  dignity.  The  only  race  ^ 
Races.  your  typical  noble  reflects  upon  is  that 

run  by  horses;  pedigree  and  high  breeding  are  con- 
cerns only  of  cattle;  his  course  of  study  is  the  race- 
course; and  the  highest  homage  he  offers  to  the 
Church  is  to  call  a  chase  after  the  steeple.  His  ken 
is  bounded  by  his  kennels;  and  his  vision  of  England's 
activities  is  regulated  by  the  number  of  his  tenants 
willing  to  be  puppy-walkers.  And  all  this  with  can- 
dor. For  in  country-house  charades  I  notice  that 
the  housemaid's  part  is  coveted  by  all  the  ladies, 
while  each  of  the  sons  competes  for  that  of  the  groom. 
And  their  table-talk  is  stable-talk." 

Life  in  a  country  house  was  otherwise  described 
by  him  as  "a  series  of  meals,  mitigated  by  the  new 
dresses  of  the  ladies." 

"I  am  not  disposed  for  a  moment  to  admit  that 
my  pedigree  is  not  as  good  as  that  of  the  Cavendishes." 
This  was  a  saying  of  Disraeli's  during  the  Bucks  elec- 
tion of  1847,  when  a  member  of  the  House  of  Caven- 
dish was  also  a  candidate. 

The  great  Whig  families — an  oligarchy  he  called 
them,  with  memories  of  his  Venetian  ancestry — had 
barred  his  way  to  Parliament  when  he  was  a  young 
man  with  "no  connections."  His  own  descent,  he  hints 

'  "TJare."  on  tlip  rontrarv,  Disraeli  hold,  "is  tho  key  of  history."  In  this 
mood  he  went  so  far  as  to  say  :  "Prosjrpss  and  reaction  are  hut  words  to 
mystify  the  million.  Tn  the  strnftnre.  tho  decay,  and  the  dovolopmont  of  the 
Tarions  families  of  man,  the  vicissitudes  of  history  find  their  main  solution : 
all  is  race." 

115 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

elsewhere,  is  from  Abraham.  But  a  Grey  (his  op- 
ponent on  his  first  hustings  was  a  son  of  the  Prime 
Minister) — a  Grey  too  can  trace,  in  a  general  way, 
back  to  Adam.  That  is  the  weak  as  well  as  the  strong 
point  of  all  pedigree-mongering;  and  Disraeli,  in  em- 
phasizing descent  in  the  instance  of  Jews,  Arabs, 
Spanish  grandees,  and  the  rest,  did  so,  less  to  glorify 
them,  than  to  humble  the  haughty  of  our  Island,  our 
"mushroom  aristocracy,"  as  Tie  calls  it.  Families  who 
date  back  a  few  hundred  years  in  our  Island  history 
shrank  beneath  this  larger  range  of  vision  when  Dis- 
raeli the  cosmopolitan  measured  men  by  universal 
rather  than  local  standards;  and,  thinking  of  Koman 
families  who  were  great  when  Caesar  conquered 
Britain,  but  when  the  ancestors  of  the  Stanleys  were 
woad-painted  savages,  closed  Debrett,  after  studying 
it  for  what  it  was  worth,  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoul- 
ders and  a  reflection.  If  Stanley,  with  a  recorded  an- 
cestor of  a  thousand  years  ago,  was  to  be  set  above 
a  Lord  Mowbray  (of  Dizzy's  own  creation  in  fii/hU), 
with  a  recorded  ancestor  of  only  a  century  or  two 
ago,  how  much  above  a  Stanl\  must  be  set  an  Orien- 
tal with  a  recorded  ancestry  of,  say,  two  thousand 
years.  Yet  a  Stanley  thought  nothing  of  a  Fakredeen. 
The  deduction  may  be  either  one  of  two:  it  may  level 
up  or  may  level  down.  With  many  a  slash,  here  at 
the  family  tree,  there  at  the  national  hedge  that  en- 
closes and  stifles  it,  Disraeli  was  still  indulging  his 
old  hobby — a  detestation  of  the  Whigs.  No  doubt  it 
was  his  want  of  success  in  destroying  at  the  polls  the 
prestige  of  the  Whig  families  that  made  him  scruti- 

116 


RACE   AND   THE   RACES 

nize  their  credentials,  and  banter  those  who  were 
swayed  by  them:  a  Jack  Straw  might  be  hanged,  he 
said  (with  a  finger  turned  to  Lord  John  Russell),  while 
a  Lord  John  Straw  became  a  Minister  in  England. 

Vivian  Grey  did  not  consider  these  things:  but  be- 
tween the  date  of  that  book  and  the  date  of  Coniiigshy, 
Si/hil,  and  the  rest,  Disraeli  had  unsuccessfully  meas- 
ured his  strength,  as  man  to  man,  against  that  of 
Colonel  Grey,  Lord  Grey's  third  son,  remembered  now 
by  what  he  later  became — Queen  Victoria's  secretary 
and  the  editor  of  The  Early  Life  of  the  Prince  Consort. 

"Ancient  lineage,"  said  Millbank,  taking  the 
phrase  from  Coningsby's  lips — "I  never  heard  of  a 
peer  with  an  ancient  lineage.  The  real  old  families  of 
this  country  are  to  be  found  among  the  peasantry" — 
(Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  has  at  least  one  personal  note  in 
his  novels  in  harmony  with  Disraeli's);  "the  gentry 
too  may  lay  some  claim  to  old  blood.  But  a  peer  with 
an  ancient  lineage  is  to  me  quite  a  novelty.  No,  no; 
the  thirty  years  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  freed  us 
from  those  gentlemen.  I  take  it  after  the  Battle  of 
Tewkesbury  a  baron  was  almost  as  rare  a  being  in 
England  as  a  wolf." 

And  when  Coningsby  self-defendingly  says:  "I 
have  always  understood  that  our  peerage  was  the 
finest  in  Europe,"  that  ninepin  is  put  up  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  Disraeli  in  knocking  it  down. 

"From  themselves,"  said  ^Ir.  ^fillbank,  "and  the 
heralds  they  pay  to  paint  their  carriages?  But  I  go 
to  facts.  When  Henry  VTI  called  his  first  Parliament, 
there  were  only  twenty-nine  temporal   peers  to  be 

117 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

^^    ^f    tbpsp   took   their    seats 
found,    and    even    some    of    ^l^ese   too 
niP^allY     for    they    had    been    attained.      Of    tliose 
illegally,    lui  j  Howards 

twenty-nine  not  five  remain,  and  they  as  the 
inv  instance    are  not  Norman  nobility.    ^\e  o^se  tne 
for  instance,  ar  spoliation  of 

U    e.7e    iuart.;  and  tUe  bo..ougU-u.on.e.ing  o    o.r 
»,     Those  are  the  three  main  sources  o£  the 

(one  recalls  "Batavian  grace  )     while  tuey  V 

Korman  titles,"  withont  either  Gorman  "8^ts  -  ^"J 
:nan  duties,  for  "They  did  not  conquer  the  land   uo 
do  they  defend  it."    Sybil  tells  the  same  tale,  and  gives 
■tin  one  sentence  a  new  turn:    "There  is  no  long  r 
„   act  an  aristocracy  in  England,  for  the  superiority 
o/the  animal  is  an  essential  quality  of  aristocracy. 

TO  Cardinal  Manning:     "Yes,  I  believe  in  grace 
as  I  believe  in  fortune;  and  that  we  get  just  as  much 
\        as  we  have  earned  for  ourselves  m  past 
rirUfces.    existences,  or  as  others  have  earned  for 
„s  in  past  eras.    Is  not  our  theory  of  an  hereditary 
"molchy  and  Upper  House  of  ^arliameut  m  som 
blind  popular  way  a  witness  to  this  belief.     The 
Sureh  iTas  her  apostolic  procession:  the  world  - 
hereditary  honors:  each  conferred  out  of  the  store 
'house  of  the  past.    And  I  always  have  that  idea  a 
the  back  of  my  mind  when  I  say  'lour  Grace 


duke!" 

118 


OF    MEN    AND    BOOKS 

To  an  aiitlior,  preseutiug  an  impossible  book: 
''Many  thanks:  I  shall  lose  no  time  in  reading  it." 
Of  Men  and  '^^^^  ambiguity,  fathered  upon  Disraeli, 
Books.  might  very  well  be  his;  and  if  there  is 

as  little  evidence  of  the  paternity  as  that  which  some- 
times satisfies  a  magistrate  of  sentiment,  we  can  say 
'^Jicii  //ora/o"  in  all  truth.  For  clean  neatness  the 
phrase  has  the  advantage  of  that  formula  which 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  puts  into  the  mouth  of  "the 
Master,"  who,  after  a  few  flattering  adjectives  about 
a  presentation  volume,  added:  "I  am  lying  under  a 
sense  of  obligation." 

To  Henry  Cowper:  "I  delight  in  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice, and  have  read  it  seventeen  times."  Who  would 
question  the  simple  second-decade  figure  of  a  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer?  Anyway,  if  he  read  the  book 
seven  times,  he  made  amends,  say,  for  Charlotte 
Bronte's  failure  to  have  read  it  even  once  when  she 
wrote  her  criticisms  of  Jane  Austen.  The  doctrine 
of  the  Church  which  credits  the  superfluous  merits  of 
the  saints  to  the  account  of  repentant  sinners  has  its 
comforting  application  to  the  reading  of  good  works 
of  fiction;  so  that  whenever  I  meet  a  friend,  whose  lit- 
erary soul  is  my  solicitude,  and  who  has  not  read 
Prince  Otto,  or  has  read  it  only  once  perfunctorily,  I 
go  home  and  read  it  yet  again,  offering  vicari- 
ously my  friend's  homage  to  the  ghost  of  Steven- 
son, and  never  wearying  in  that  work  of  sui3ereroga- 
tion. 

"They  think  it  tlie  Battle  of  Armageddon;  let  us 
go  to  lunch."     This  is  said  to  a  congenial  friend,  a 

119 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

poet,  after  a  crucial  division  at  the  club  on  some  ex- 
citing trifle  of  internal  politics. 

After  reading  Coventry  Patmore's  Anti-Reform 
Bill  lines  beginning  ^'When  the  false  English  nobles 
and  their  Jew." 

"I  collapse.  If  the  poets  are  against  me,  I  give 
up;  for  behind  the  poets  are  ranged  the  young  men.^ 
Yet  the  main  difference  between  this  mystic  and  my- 
self is  one  of  Islands,  I  live  in  Britain;  Patmore  in 
Patmos." 

Mr.  Coventry  Patmore's  father  also  had  been  a 
severe  critic  of  Disraeli  forty  years  earlier — see 
his  hostile  notice  of  Contarini  Fleming  in  the  Court. 
Circular.  Beckford's  praise  of  the  book  was  a  com- 
pensation at  the  time  (May,  1832):  "This  really  con- 
soles me  for  Mr.  Patmore."  If  Mr.  Coventry  Patmore 
had  no  liking  for  the  Liberalism  of  Disraeli,  words 
falter  before  any  description  of  his  detestation  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's.  I  remember  that  when  I  was  a  guest 
of  the  poet  at  the  Manor  House,  Hastings,  a  visit  of 
Mr.  Gladstone  to  the  town  was  bruited  abroad;  where- 
upon the  Patmore  servants  w^ere,  with  grim  humor, 
forbidden  to  go  into  the  tainted  streets  where  they 
might  encounter  the  leper  of  politics.  When  Patmore 
was  the  last  opponent  left  of  "popular  government" 
in  England,  he  made  the  best  of  a  bad  job,  and  had 
such  consolation  as  is  expressed  in  a  little  verse,  ad- 
dressed to  a  lady  who  permits  me  the  privilege  of 
putting  it  into  print: 

'  "Poets,"  says  one  of  bis  characters,  "are  the  unacknowledged  legislators 
of  the  world." 

120 


OF   MEN   AND   BOOKS 

To (Seeking  to  make  me  a  Radical). 

Dear,  cither's  creed  one  hope  foretells  ; 

Mine  waits  ;  yours,  kindlier,  hastes. 
But  what  to  us  are  principles 

Who  are  one  in  Tory  tastes  ? 
Bear  in  your  hat  what  badge  you  may— 

The  Red  Republic's  even — 
So  all  your  lovely  ways  obey 

The  Monarchy  of  Heaven. 

To  Sir  William  Fraser,  who  had  lost  his  seat  in 
Parliament  (in  1853):  "You  have  now  but  one  thing 
left  in  life — a  course  of  Balzac." 

From  Sir  William  Fraser's  Disraeli  and  his  Day: 
"I  was  the  last  person  with  whom  Disraeli  conversed 
in  the  Carlton  Club.  He  seldom  came  there.  I  on 
that  day  went  up  to  speak  to  him — a  thing  I  rarely 
did.  He  was  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  morning- 
room,  looking  vacantly  around;  I  said  to  him:  'I  know 
you  wish  some  one  to  speak  to  you.'  He  said:  ^I  am 
very  much  obliged  to  you.  I  am  so  blind;  I  come 
here;  I  look  round;  I  see  no  one;  I  go  away.'  I  said 
to  him:  ^You  told  me  many  years  ago,  when  I  first 
lost  my  seat,  that  I  ought  to  go  through  a  course  of 
Balzac.  I  have  been  very  ill  lately;  I  have  been  going 
through  a  course  of  Beaconsfield.'  He  paused  a  mo- 
ment, to  consider  what  he  should  say  that  was  civil; 
and  then:  'I  am  glad  to  have  had  so  appreciative  a 
reader.'  I  said:  'I  hope  you  have  got  a  good  sum  for 
the  last  edition.'  'Which  is  that?'  'A  very  gorgeous 
one;  in  brown  cloth,  gilt:  called  "The  Beaconsfield 
Edition.'' '     'I  must  inquire  about  that.'     'I  should 

121 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

have  liked  very  much  to  have  gone  through  the  char- 
acters of  your  early  novels  with  you;  but  I  never  liked 
to  trouble  you.'  'They  were  not  portraits:  they  were 
photographs.'  'Pardon  me,  but  surely  they  were  not 
photographs  which  gave  every  trait  of  the  individual; 
they  were  idealized  portraits.'  'Yes,  you  are  quite 
right:  that  is  the  correct  term — idealized  portraits.' 
'There  is  a  man  in  this  room  at  this  moment  whom 
you  mention  by  name  in  the  first  chapter  of  Vivian 
Grey.^  'Is  there?'  said  Disraeli  in  a  deep  voice,  look- 
ing round.  'Where?'  'That  fat  man,  with  a  red  face, 
fast  asleep  in  the  armchair.'  Disraeli  gazed  at  the 
individual,  and  then  said:  'Who  is  he?'  'His  name 
is  Appleyard.'  Disraeli  uttered  one  of  those  oracular 
and  depreciatory  grunts  which  were  frequent  with 
him  when  he  wished  not  to  express  an  articulate 
opinion." 

Sir  William  Fraser,  whose  jestings  were  not  al- 
ways convenient  as  to  time,  subject,  or  place,  and 
whose  executor  found  himself  burdened  with  unbar- 
gained-for  responsibilities,  then  proceeded  to  tell 
Lord  Beaconsfield  a  story  that  was  broad  as  well  as 
long — two  intrusions  that  Disraeli  hated.  A  propos, 
another  member  of  the  Carlton  Club,  who  knew  Dis- 
raeli well,  writes  to  me:  "The  Chief  never  told  a  vul- 
gar story  in  his  life,  and  always  shuffled  nervously 
when  he  had — as  of  course  he  often  had — to  hear  one. 
He  was  no  prude;  but  dirty  puddles  had  no  hold  on 
one  whose  mental  vision  was  that  of  a  clean  sea.  He 
loathed  levity  about  the  only  serious  and  mysterious 
thing  we  really  know — the  Body.    He  faced  the  facts 

122 


OF   MEN   AND   BOOKS 

of  life,  physiological  and  spiritual,  gravely,  I  had  al- 
most said  sorrowfully;  he  faced  them  compassion- 
ately. I  have  seen  him  maneuver  and  dodge  to  escape 
bores,  but  particularly  dirty  bores.  As  in  his  writings, 
so  in  his  conversation,  he  was  without  spot  and  with- 
out reproach.  You  had  not  the  feeling  that  he  was 
fighting  his  nature  and  flattering  his  conscience  by 
his  correctness.  You  felt  instinctively  that  nothing 
else  was  worth  his  while." 

That,  however,  was  not  Sir  William  Fraser's  ap- 
preciation. There  were  some  things  beyond  his  view 
— even  the  simplest  working  of  the  law  of  cause  and 
effect;  after  that  conversation  Lord  Beaconsfield 
came  to  the  club  no  more. 

At  a  house-party  at  the  Duke  of  Bedford's  at 
Woburn  in  the  late  'seventies.  Dr.  Jowett,  who  was 
of  the  company,  and  who  had  at  least  a  Benjamin  in 
common  with  his  fellow-guest,  reports  that  Disraeli 
"regretted  the  new  translation  of  the  Scriptures, 
which  could  have  no  authority  and  would  disturb 
many  consecrated  phrases;  but  thought  very  highly 
of  Kenan's  Evangiles,  and  praised  his  book  on  Solo- 
mon's Song.  Wished  for  a  new  book  on  Ecclesiastes. 
He  told  Mr.  Cowper  that  he  first  turned  his  thoughts 
to  politics  when  in  quarantine  at  Malta  for  forty-two 
days.  The  Consul  had  sent  him  two  years'  Galignani's 
to  read,  and  from  that  time  he  began  to  understand 
politics." 

Details  in  nearly  all  such  reported  conversations 
fail  in  accuracy  when  tested.  Disraeli  was  in  Gibral- 
tar August  9,  1830,  and  wrote  thence  to  his  sister 

123 


-^ 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"Sa,"  thanking  her  for  her  "most  welcome"  and 
"most  sweet"  letter,  and  saying  that  "the  Mediter-, 
ranean  packet  is  hourly  expected."  By  it  he  went  to 
Malta,  writing  thence  to  his  father  from  the  lazarette 
on  August  25:  "We  are  free  to-morrow."  The 
journey  and  the  quarantine  together  took,  therefore, 
only  seventeen  days.  He  had  then  been  only  two 
months  away  from  home,  and  two  months'  GalignanVs, 
rather  than  two  years',  was  probably  the  ConsuFs 
allowance;  particularly  as  Disraeli  had  been  an  eager 
newspaper  reader  at  home,  and  had  written  a  few  days 
earlier  from  Gibraltar,  "I  see  all  newspapers  sooner 
or  later."  He  does  not,  in  his  detailed  letters,  men- 
tion any  new  light  on  public  affairs  as  having  come 
to  him  in  his  few  days'  detention,  and  his  "under- 
standing" of  English  politics  had  been  already  ex- 
hibited in  the  pages  of  Vivian  Grey.  At  each  important 
stage  of  his  journey,  where  newspapers  met  him,  he 
eagerly  read  the  arrears.  From  Athens  toward  the 
close  of  this  year  (1830)  he  wrote:  "I  have  just  got  a 
pile  of  papers";  from  Constantinople  in  the  January 
following:  "I  have  just  got  through  a  pile  of  Galign- 
ani^s";  from  Cairo,  on  the  last  day  of  May,  1831,  he 
exclaims  over  "the  wonderful  news"  (about  the  Ee- 
form  movement)  "which  meets  me  here  in  a  pile  of 
GaUgnanVs^^ — the  most  exciting  budget  that  he  ever 
received,  and  one  to  which  he  might  very  probably 
make  allusions  long  afterward  in  his  talk,  though  not 
in  the  sense  reported  here. 

Asked   at  a  dinner-party  if  he  had  read  Daniel 
Deronda:    "When  I  want  to  read  a  novel,  I  write  one." 

124 


OF   MEN   AND   BOOKS 

A  clergyman,  having  bungled  into  Lady  Howard's 
garden-party  at  Craven  Cottage,  Fulham,  instead  of 
the  Bishop  of  London's  next  door,  lingered  in  the  mun- 
dane crowd.  Disraeli  said:  "Obviously  a  casuist. 
Having  come  in  by  error  he  feels  no  obligation  to 
retire." 

Craven  Cottage  had  interesting  Disraeli  associa- 
tions. It  is  introduced  by  name  into  the  pages  of 
Taxcrcd.  Thither  goes  the  hero  to  his  first  breakfast 
with  Mrs.  Guy  Flouncey: 

"He  rather  liked  it.  The  scene,  lawns  and  groves, 
and  a  glancing  river,  the  music,  our  beautiful  country- 
women, who  with  their  brilliant  complexions  and 
bright  bonnets  do  not  shrink  from  daylight,  make 
a  morning  festival  very  agreeable,  even  if  one  be 
dreaming  of  Jerusalem." 

Craven  Cottage  was  the  creation  of  the  Margra- 
vine of  Anspach  when  married  to  Lord  Craven.  After 
them  came  Bulwer,  who  describes  it  in  Ernest 
Maltravcrs.  Indeed,  that  book,  and  its  sequel,  Alice, 
were  written  within  its  narrow  country-in-town 
enclosures. 

To  Sir  William  Harcourt  (at  Hughenden);  "The 
literary  movement  has  left  me  behind.  I  learn  from 
two  young  men  who  came  here  from  Oxford  the  other 
day  that  Byron  is  no  longer  regarded  for  his  poetry, 
only  for  his  sublimity  of  soul." 

If  Disraeli  did  not,  like  Tennyson,. go  out  and  cut  on 
a  tree  "Byron  is  dead,"  he  none  the  less  came  with- 
in the  glamour  of  that  Byron's  influence  and  legend 
which  was  a  reaction  from  the  convention,  the  stodgi- 

125 


.     BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ness,  the  mock  modesty,  which  Byron's  reckless  can- 
dor brushed  away.  If  he,  too,  canted,  he  canted 
against  cant.  With  all  his  failings  he  was  a  deliverer; 
and  this  perhaps  is  what  Young  Oxford  meant  to 
say.  Disraeli,  in  Venetia,  where  he  makes  him  a  sort 
of  wayward  idol,  shows  how  strong  a  hold  Byron  had 
over  his  imagination — over  the  imagination  of  all 
that  generation.  And,  years  earlier,  in  Tivicni  Grey, 
he  had  put  into  the  mouth  of  Cleveland  this  estimate: 

"If  anything  were  more  characteristic  of  Byron's 
mind  than  another,  it  was  his  strong,  shrewd  common- 
sense,  his  pure  unalloyed  sagacity.  The  loss  of  Byron 
can  never  be  retrieved.  He  was  indeed  a  real  man; 
and  when  I  say  this,  I  award  him  the  most  splendid 
character  which  human  nature  need  aspire  to.  At 
least  I,  for  my  part,  have  no  desire  to  be  considered 
either  a  divinity  or  an  angel;  and  truly,  when  I  look 
round  upon  the  creatures  alike  effeminate  in  mind 
and  body  of  which  the  world  is,  in  general,  composed, 
I  fear  that  even  that  ambition  is  too  exalted.  Byron's 
mind  was,  like  his  own  ocean,  sublime  in  its  yeasty 
madness,  beautiful  in  its  glittering  summer  bright- 
ness, mighty  in  the  lone  magnificence  of  its  waste  of 
waters,  gazed  upon  from  the  magic  of  its  own  nature; 
yet  capable  of  representing,  but  as  in  a  glass  darkly, 
the  natures  of  all  others." 

Moreover,  in  Coningshy  Byron  is  labeled  "greater 
even  as  a  man  than  as  a  writer."  This  surely  must 
have  been  the  very  send-off  of  that  movement  which 
he  said  left  him  behind  when  he  heard  Young  Oxford 
re-echoing  Disraeli  the  Younger. 

126 


IN   THE    HOUSEHOLD 

To  the  guests  at  countrj'-houses  as  a  mild  catch: 
"Who  wrote  'Small  by  degrees,  aud  beautifully 
less?'  "  Few  replied  Prior;  and  fewer  pointed  out  the 
substitution  of  "small"  for  the  "fine''  of  the  poet. 
John,  seventh  Duke  of  Rutland,  says:  "I  remember 
perfectly  fifty  years  ago  Disraeli  put  that  question 
at  my  father's  house  at  Belvoir  and  floored  us  all." 

To  Sir  William  Fraser,  who  tried  to  draw  him 
about  caricatures  and  their  effects  on  a  man's  public 
life:  "  In  these  days  every  one's  object  is  to  be  made 
ridiculous." 

"We  live  by  admiration"  less  than  by  advertising. 
Even  a  minister  who  delivers  a  speech  or  an  author 
who  produces  a  novel  must  take  the  consequence  of 
his  name's  access  of  notoriety.  After  the  issue  of 
Endi/mion,  Lord  Beaconsfield  said  to  a  friend:  "It  is 
a  strange  thing,  but  acquaintances  keep  calling  at 
the  house  and  asking  after  me,  as  if  I  had  had  a  baby." 

He  said  in  his  later  and  very  lonely  days:  "My 
friends  send  me  many  books.  I  don't  know  which 
profit  me  most — those  that  keep  me  awake  at  night 
or  those  that  send  me  to  sleep." 

A  secretary  sharply  scolded  a  servant  in  the 
presence  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  wiio,  when  the  servant 
In  the  had    withdrawn,    shrugged    deprecating 

Household.  shoulders.  "Oh,  but  he  is  such  an  idiot," 
pleaded  the  secretary.  Lord  B. :  "lias  it  never  oc- 
curred to  you  that  if  he  was  not  an  idiot  he  would  not 
be  a  servant?" 

To  Henry  Cowper,  at  Woburn,  Disraeli  said  of  one 

127 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

of  Captain  Burnaby's  books  that  he  could  not  forgive 
its  wretched  sketch  of  English  servants  abroad. 

"Ah,"  said  Cowper,  "he  did  not  manage  that  so 
well  as  you  did  in  Tancredy 

"I  see,"  was  the  reply,  "that  you  have  lately  been 
reading  that  work.  I  myself  am  in  the  habit  of  re- 
curring to  it,  when  I  wish  to  renew  my  knowledge  of 
the  East." 

Those  servants  in  Taucred  are  numbered  among 
our  friends.  Freeman  and  Trueman  had  been  told 
off  with  Roby  and  the  rest  to  accompany  Tancred, 
Lord  Montacute,  to  Palestine.  For  them,  indeed,  the 
West  was  West  and  the  East  was  East — they  took 
their  national  prejudices  as  well  as  their  forks  with 
them;  and  Disraeli  in  his  sallies  recognizes  that  they 
are  kith  and  kin  with  all  their  race: 

"'And  the  most  curious  thing,'  said  Freeman  to 
Trueman,  as  they  established  themselves  under  a  pine- 
tree,  with  an  ample  portion  of  roast  meat,  and  armed 
with  their  traveling  knives  and  forks — 'and  the  most 
curious  thing  is,  that  they  say  these  .people  are 
Christians.  Who  ever  heard  of  Christians  wearing 
turbans?'  'Or  eating  without  knives  and  forks?' 
added  Trueman." 

And  then  Disraeli  thrusts  at  the  tourist's  self-com- 
placency in  ignorance: 

"  'It  would  astonish  their  weak  minds  in  the  stew- 
ard's room  at  Bellamont,  if  they  could  see  all  this, 
John,'  said  ]Mr.  Freeman  pensively.  'A  man  who 
travels  has  very  great  advantages.'  'And  very  great 
hardships  too,'  said  Trueman.    'I  don't  care  for  work, 

128 


AT   HUGHEXDEN    CHURCH 

but  I  do  like  to  have  my  meals  regular.'  'You  are 
thinking  if  anything  were  to  happen  to  either  of  us 
in  this  heathen  land,  where  we  should  get  Christian 
burial?'  'Lord  love  you,  Mr.  Freeman,  no  I  wasn't. 
I  was  thinking  of  a  glass  of  ale.'  'One  wants  consola- 
tion, John,  sometimes — one  does,  indeed;  and,  for  my 
part,  I  do  miss  the  family  prayers  and  the  home- 
brewed.' " 

Again  the  faithful  retainers,  seeing  Lord  Monta- 
cute's  devotion  to  an  Eastern  lady  and  an  Eastern 
chief,  re-echo  the  set  opinions  of  the  classes;  nor  does 
Disraeli  fail  of  one  shaft  directed  against  the  legisla- 
ture itself: 

"  'It  is  much  better  than  monks  and  hermits  [Free- 
man says],  and  low  people  of  that  sort,  who  are  not 
b}'  no  means  fit  company  for  somebody  I  could  men- 
tion, and  might  turn  him  into  a  papist  into  the  bar- 
gain.' 'That  would  be  a  bad  business,'  said  Trueman; 
*my  lady  could  never  abide  that.  It  would  be  better 
that  he  should  turn  Turk.'  'I  am  not  sure  it  wouldn't,' 
said  ^Ir.  Freeman.  'It  would  be  in  a  manner  more  con- 
stitutional. The  Sultan  of  Turkey  may  send  an  Am- 
bassador to  our  Queen,  but  the  Pope  of  Rome  may 
not.' " 

"This  Hughenden  parish  is  torn  in  two  by  dissen- 
sions. There  is  civil  war  between  those  who  support 
At  Hughenden  <^1'*'  open  alms-plate  and  those  who  sup- 
Church,  pj^j.^  ^1^^  closed  bag."  So  he  said  to  Sir 
William  Harconrt  when  that  young  politician,  who 
had  entered  Parliament  in  order  to  slay  him,  became 
10  129 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

his  guest.  On  the  way  to  church  on  Sunday  the  host 
(whose  sympathies  with  the  Public  Worship  Kegula- 
tion  Bill  were  also  Harcourt's)  warned  his  companion 
that  echoes  of  the  High  Church  controversy  had 
penetrated  even  that  sylvan  retreat. 

"My  friend  the  vicar,"  said  the  Lord  of  the  Manor, 
"will  take  what  I  call  a  collection  and  he  calls  an 
offertory,  and  it  will  be  placed  on  what  he  calls  an 
altar  but  on  what  the  churchwardens  call  a  table." 

But  Disraeli  was  not  always  a  mere  onlooker  at 
the  rites  and  ceremonies  of  his  parish  church.  When 
he  died,  the  vicar,  the  Rev.  H.  Blagden,  paid  him  pub- 
lic tribute  for  his  private  pieties.  "Have  we  not  here 
watched  him,  even  when  at  the  height  of  his  pros- 
perity and  power,  coming  down,  simply  and  humbly, 
Sunday  after  Sunday,  to  take  his  place  among  us  and 
worship  God?  Do  we  not  remember  how  we  knelt 
side  by  side  with  him,  only  on  Christmas  Day  last  at 
your  altar,  where  he  received  from  my  hands  the 
Blessed  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ?" 

"How  do  you  contrive  to  retain  your  youthful  ap- 
pearance and  health?"    The  question  was  put  in  the 
street  by  Lord  Beaeonsfield  to  a  former 

la  Harness. 

colleague,  who  had  retired  from  public 
life.  "By  enjoying  all  the  repose  I  can,"  was  the  recipe 
advertised  by  the  rubicund  friend.  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  reply  was  a  snort: 

"Repose!  good  Heavens,  repose!"  he  exclaimed,  as 
of  a  thing  impossible  in  his  case,  if  not  absolutely 
cowardly. 

130 


IMrilESSIONS   AND   PORTRAITS 

To  Lord  Aberdaro,  who  met  Lord  Beaconstield  in 

the  precincts  of  the  House  of  Lords  shortly  after  he 

had  taken  his  peerage,  and  who  asked  him 

"Gone  up." 

how  he  liked  it:    "Well,  I  feel  that  I  am 
dead,  but  in  the  Elysian  fields." 

"After  the  Cabinet,  the  Household."  The  saying 
was  quoted  as  Disraeli's  by  politicians  who  were  not 
Impressions  Under-secretaries  themselves,  and  there- 
and  Portraits,  f^j.^  perhaps  not  Unwilling  to  minimize 
the  importance  of  those  who  were. 

Of  a  member  of  the  Government  who  absented 
himself  from  a  division:  "This  won't  do;  he  has  taken 
the  Queen's  shilling!" 

He  himself  was,  of  all  members  and  ministers, 
one  of  the  most  patiently  punctual  and  persevering 
in  attendance  at  debates,  committees,  and  coun- 
cils. 

Of  Sir  James  Graham  and  Sir  John  Pakington,  of 
whom  somebody  said  to  him  that  their  noses  had 
a  judicial  look:  "Yes,  quarter  sessions  and  petty 
sessions." 

So  far  back  as  in  1838,  when  Sir  John  Pakington 
(afterward  "sent  up" — which  is  sometimes  very  like 
being  "sent  down" — as  Lord  Hampton)  made  his 
maiden  speech,  Disraeli  saw  instantly  the  sessions 
simile.  Pakington,  on  that  occasion,  sat  next  to  Dis- 
raeli— the  Disraeli  who  had  been  obliged  to  desist 
when  making  his  own  debut,  and  who  thus  passed  judg- 
ment on  his  apparently  more  successful  neighbor, 
made  perforce  his  neighbor  again,  on  a  future  Treas- 

131 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ury  Bench,  no  other  clay  being  at  hand  to  put  into 
shape: 

*'Pakington's  friends  expected  a  great  deal  from 
him,  and  they  announce  that  he  quite  fulfilled  their 
expectations.  He  was  confident,  fluent,  and  common- 
place, and  made  a  good  chairman  of  quarter  sessions 
speech.  'It  was  the  best  speech  that  he  ever  will 
make,'  said  Sugden,  'and  he  has  been  practising  it 
before  the  grand  jury  for  the  last  twenty  years.' 
How^ever,  I  supported  him  very  zealously,  and  he  went 
to  bed  thinking  he  was  an  orator,  and  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Pakington,  I've  no  doubt,  to  that  effect." 

All  dull  men  do  not  belong  to  one  side  of  the  House 
— the  House  would  have  to  be  enlarged,  perhaps 
doubled,  if  they  did.  To  Sir  James  Graham,  here 
linked  with  Pakington,  though  politically  severed, 
Disraeli  was  introduced  in  1836  at  a  dinner  where 
they  and  Peel  were  fellow-guests  of  Lord  Chandos, 
and  where  Disraeli  (within  one  year  of  his  senatorship) 
was  the  only  man  not  in  Parliament.  Once  he  got 
there,  sparring  began;  and  it  was  a  reference  made 
by  Disraeli,  during  his  first  tenure  of  office  as  Chancel- 
lor of  Exchequer  in  1852,  to  Sir  James  Graham  as  a 
politician  whom  "I  will  not  say  I  greatly  respect,  but 
whom  rather  I  greatly  regard,"  that  brought  the 
literal  Gladstone  to  his  feet  with  an  indignant  rebuke: 
"I  must  tell  the  right  honorable  gentleman  that  he 
is  not  entitled  to  say  to  my  right  honorable  friend  the 
member  for  Carlisle  that  he  regards  him  but  that  he 
does  not  respect  him.  I  must  tell  the  right  honorable 
gentleman  that  whatever  he  has  learned — and  he  has 

132 


IMPRESSIONS   AND   PORTRAITS 

leai'iied  mueh — lie  has  not  jet  learned  the  limits  of 
discretion,  of  moderation,  and  of  forbearance,  that 
ought  to  restrain  the  conduct  and  language  of  every 
member  of  this  House,  the  disregard  of  which  is  an 
offense  in  the  meiinest  among  us,  but  is  of  tenfold 
weight  when  committed  by  the  Leader  of  the  House 
of  Commons/'  Surely  above  the  accessory  cheers 
that  greeted  these  words  from  the  one  side  and 
the  derisive  but  equally  regular  cries  of  derision  from 
the  other,  the  inner  ear  could  hear  Homeric  laugh- 
ter of  gods  at  the  Parliamentary  tactics  of  the 
Islanders. 

One  element  of  the  natural  regard  Disraeli  felt  for 
the  politician  whom  he  could  not  respect  may  be 
sought  perhaps  altogether  apart  from  the  life  of  the 
legislature.  Disraeli's  great  liking  for  the  three  Sher- 
idan sisters,  Lady  Seymour,  Mrs.  Norton,  and  Mrs. 
Blackwood,  is  noted  on  another  page;  and  Graham 
was  their  uncle — the  most  "respectable"  member  of 
the  family,  they  would  have  said.  How  often  are  Par- 
liamentary manners  softened  by  the  relations  be- 
tween men  and  the  women  of  their  foes!  If  gentlemen 
of  the  House  ever  pay  that  homage  to  absent  beauty, 
nameless  where  all  else  is  brawled,  the  return  is  si- 
lently made.  Diana  of  the  Crossways  chose  her  home 
at  Westminster  by  the  woman's  instinct  to  be  near  a 
massed  masculinity: — that  Diana  who  nevertheless 
declared,  in  a  cry  of  personal  anguish:  "A  woman 
in  the  pillory  restores  the  original  bark  of  brotherhood 
to  mankind." 

To  a  colleague,  who,  when  staying  at  Hughenden, 

133 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

proposed  a  walk:  "A  walk — impossible:  a  saunter,  if 
you  please." 

Lord  Eldon,  years  before,  had  died  regretting  three 
errors — the  first  of  which  was  that  he  had  once 
walked  where  he  might  have  ridden.  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain, after  Disraeli,  avoids  walking  any  distance — 
further,  let  us  say,  than  across  the  floor  of  the  House 
of  Commons. 

Nevertheless  when  Lord  Stanley  (afterward  head 
of  the  Derby-Disraeli  Administration)  paid  his  first 
visit  to  Hughenden  in  January,  1851  (not  a  good  saun- 
tering month,  certainly),  Disraeli's  own  record  is  as 
follows : 

"Stanley's  visit  to  Hughenden  was  very  agreeable. 
Having  no  horses" — a  proviso  which  might  mollify 
even  a  Lord  Eldon — "we  took  long  walks  together — 
one  day  to  Hampden;  another  to  the  Abbey.  The  view 
of  Hughenden  across  the  heights  is  quite  marvelous. 
I  had  never  seen  it  before.  We  walked  to  Denver 
Hill  and  its  sylvan  neighborhood;  and  on  Sunday, 
after  church,  we  walked  on  the  hills  in  view  of  Dash- 
wood's  Park,  till  me  got  to  Westcombe  Church." 

Disraeli  had  then  for  three  years  been  the  unex- 
ploring  owner  of  Hughenden. 

A  favorite  sentiment  of  Disraeli's  in  middle  life, 
reported  by  many  friends  in  slightly  varying  phrases, 
but  best  remembered  in  the  form  addressed  to  his 
sister  when  Lord  Stanley  in  1851  failed  (through  faint- 
heartedness) to  form  a  Government:  "We  can  not 
complain  of  fortune:  only  of  our  inveterate  imbecility 
which  could  not  avail  itself  of  her  abundant  favors." 

134 


IMPRESSIONS   AND    rORTRAITS 

To  a  frieud  who  congratulated  him  on  his  first 
Premiership:  '^Yes,  I  have  climbed  to  the  top  of  the 
greasy  pole." 

Conversing  with  Lord  Ronald  Gower  (whom  he 
called  ''dearest"  over  a  cigarette  at  Hughenden),  he 
placed  among  happiest  things  "one  of  those  long  mid- 
summer days  when  one  dines  at  nine  o'clock."  To 
Lord  Ronald  Gower  it  was  that  he  said  of  certain 
grave  colleagues  who  took  life  a  little  too  literally: 
"Mr.  W.  H. — or  is  it  Mr.  H.  W.? — Smith"  (memorable 
Benjamin!),  "or  Mr.  Secretary  Cross,  whom  I  always 
forget  to  call  Sir  Richard." 

"He  wears  his  eyeglass  like  a  gentleman."  This, 
according  to  Lobby  gossip,  was  Disraeli's  unimpas- 
sioned  comment  on  the  first  Parliamentary  speech  of 
Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain,  who  had  newly  come  from 
Birmingham  with  denunciation  of  Disraeli  upon  his 
lips.  Disraeli's  estimate  of  one  of  their  number  was 
characteristically  a  much  kinder  one  than  Cardinal 
Newman  had  made  upon  the  Golden  Youth  of 
Birmingham  in  general.  Dives,  said  the  preacher  in 
effect,  was  a  fine  gentleman,  but,  nevertheless,  was 
excluded  from  heaven: 

"This  was  the  fate  of  your  pattern  and  idol,  O  ye, 
if  any  of  you  be  present,  young  men  who,  though  not 
possessed  of  wealth  and  rank,  yet  affect  the  fashions 
of  those  W'ho  have  them.  You,  my  brethren,  have 
not  been  born  splendidly  or  nobly;  you  have  not  been 
brought  up  in  the  seats  of  liberal  education;  you  have 
no  high  connections;  you  have  not  learned  the  man- 
ners nor  caught  the  tone  of  good  society;  you  have 

135 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

no  share  of  the  largeness  of  mind,  the  candor,  the 
romantic  sense  of  honor,  the  correctness  of  taste,  the 
consideration  for  others,  and  the  gentleness  which  the 
world  puts  forth  as  its  highest  type  of  excellence; 
you  have  not  come  near  the  courts  or  the  mansions 
of  the  great;  yet  you  ape  the  sin  of  Dives,  while  you 
are  strangers  to  his  refinement.  You  think  it  the  sign 
of  a  gentleman  to  set  yourselves  above  religion,  to 
criticize  the  religions  and  professors  of  religion,  to 
look  at  Catholic  and  Methodist  with  impartial  con- 
tempt, to  gain  a  smattering  of  knowledge  on  a  num- 
ber of  subjects,  to  dip  into  a  number  of  frivolous  pub- 
lications, if  they  are  popular,  to  have  read  the  latest 
novel,  to  have  heard  the  singer  and  seen  the  actor  of 
the  day,  to  be  well  up  with  the  news,  to  know  the 
names  and,  if  so  be,  the  persons  of  public  men,  to  be 
able  to  bow  to  them,  to  walk  up  and  down  the  street 
with  your  heads  on  high,  and  to  stare  at  whatever 
meets  you; — and  to  say  and  do  worse  things  of  which 
these  outward  extravagances  are  but  the  symbol. 
And  this  is  what  you  conceive  you  have  come  upon 
earth  for!  The  Creator  maSe  you,  it  seems,  O  my 
children,  for  this  work  and  office,  to  be  a  bad  imitation 
of  polished  ungodliness,  to  be  a  piece  of  tawdry  and 
faded  finery,  or  a  scent  which  has  lost  its  freshness 
and  does  but  offend  the  sense!" 

If  Disraeli,  an  observer  of  Newman  from  of  old, 
had  read  this  passage,  a  point  is  supplied  to  the  say- 
ing, "27c  wears  his  eyeglass  like  a  gentleman." 

To  his  wife,  when  disappointed  by  a  Liberal 
Premier's  refusal  to  shorten  the  Easter  and  lengthen 

136 


IMPRESSIONS   AND   PORTRAITS 

the  Whitsuutide  holidays:  "My  dear,  what  can  we 
expect  from  a  Goverimient  that  is  not  in  society?" 

"I  have  a  new  phrase  for  Harcourt."  So,  toward 
the  end  of  his  life,  said  Disraeli,  and  said  no  more. 
The  phrase  died  with  him;  and  we  must  continue  to 
associate  the  "Hortensius"  of  Endymion  and  the 
''Rhodian"  combatant  in  Parliamentary  debate,  with 
the  man  for  whom  all  Dizzyites  (following  Dizzy  here 
too)  own  a  particular  kindness,  since,  having  gone  out 
to  slay  Goliath,  he  sat  instead  in  his  tent. 

"Love  has  many  long  words  in  its  vocabulary:  I 
have  used  them  mj'self  in  Henrietta  Temple  and  else- 
where. But  there  are  two  short  words  that  are  often 
missing  from  it;  and  their  absence  makes  all  the 
others  meaningless — the  prosaic  words,  'here'  and 
'now.'  Eloquence,  both  in  love  and  in  politics,  is  often 
an  excess  of  manner  to  cover  a  defect  of  matter — the 
silver  cover  that  conceals  the  empty  dish." 

"There  are  fools  and  there  are  d d  fools" — a 

nice  (and  a  nasty)  distinction.  Lord  Kobert  Montagu, 
one  of  the  younger  sons  whom  Disraeli  tried  to  en- 
courage with  minor  administrative  posts,  called  forth 
the  convenient  classification  that  leaves  too  little 
doubt  as  to  the  denomination  in  which  he  himself  was 
ranged.  But  Lord  Robert's  life  had  been  one  long 
provocation.  He  provoked  his  Anglican  friends  and 
lost  his  Huntingdonshire  seat  in  Parliament  by  be- 
coming a  Catholic;  then  he  returned  to  the  House 
(where  he  had  sat  as  a  Tory)  as  an  Irish  member  and 
a  Home  Ruler;  then,  again,  his  seat  at  the  Oratory 
and  in  Parliament  were  alike  vacated;  and,  after  hav- 

137 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ing  defended  the  Temporal  Power  as  an  all  but  divine 
appanage  of  the  Papacy,  he  wrote  pamphlets  to  prove 
that  the  Pope  was  the  Man  of  Sin  and  Manning  a 
son  of  per — and  se — dition.  Even  Disraeli's  toler- 
ance faltered  before  a  union  of  violence  and  vacil- 
lation. 

After  the  Colenso  controversy,  the  battle  of  Isan- 
dula,  and  the  death  of  the  Prince  Imperial:  "The 
Zulus  are  a  wonderful  people;  they  defeat  our  gen- 
erals, they  convert  our  bishops,  and  they  afiflx  'finis' 
to  the  fortunes  of  a  French  dynasty." 

Of  a  certain  Lord  Chancellor:  "Everybody  knows 
the  stages  of  a  lawyer's  career — he  tries  in  turn  to  get 
on,  to  get  honors,  to  get  honest.  This  one  edits  hymns 
instead  of  briefs,  and,  beginning  by  cozening  juries, 
he  compounds  with  heaven  by  cramming  children  in 
a  Sunday  school."  Disraeli,  as  is  elsewhere  indicated, 
was  not  a  lover  of  lawyers. 

To  an  objectionable  person's  invitation,  Disraeli 
began  his  refusal  "Dear  Sir."  His  secretary  pointed 
out  that  this  formalism  would  come  unflatteringly  to 
one  w^ho  was  of  great  importance  in  a  certain  county: 

"D the  county!"  said  Disraeli.     As  a  last  futile 

effort  the  secretary  said:  "But  he  is  important  to 
the  party."     "D the  party!"  said  Disraeli. 

Janetta,  Duchess  of  Rutland,  writes:  "Though  so 
kind,  he  knew  there  were  occasions  when  the  truest 
proof  of  real  kindness  was  to  maintain  his  own  views. 
No  consideration  would  induce  him  to  concede  a  point 
that,  in  his  estimation,  ought  not  to  be  yielded." 

Of  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  after  his  Republican  speech 

138 


IMrRESSIONS   AND   PORTRAITS 

at  Newcastle-on-Tyne:  "A  future  Conservative  Prime 
Minister." 

Sir  Charles  was  then  the  leader  of  a  little  con- 
stellation of  politicians,  called  by  somebody  "the 
Dilky  way."  "The  stars,  which  are  the  brain  of 
heaven,"  one  remembers,  in  this  connection,  that  Mr. 
George  Meredith  somewhere  says.  One  can  say  no 
more  of  this  than  that  Disraeli's  prophecies,  even  the 
unlikeliest,  have  the  unusual  habit  of  coming  true. 

A  member  of  his  Administration  (Lord  Bury,  after- 
ward Earl  of  Albemarle)  went  to  the  Prime  Minister 
in  fear  and  trembling  to  confess  that  he  had  joined 
the  Church  of  Rome.  He  began  by  saying  that  a 
diflficulty  had  arisen,  quite  unconnected  with  politics, 
and  that  he  was  afraid  it  meant  party  embarrassment, 
and  that  he  therefore  placed  his  resignation  in  his 
leader's  hands. 

Lord  Beaconsflekl,  laconically:     "A  lady?" 

"Well,  if  you  like — the  Scarlet  Lady.  I  have  be- 
come a  Catholic."  * 

Lord  Beaconsfield:  "But  how  very  convenient.  A 
relative  of  mine  has  just  taken  the  same  step;  and 
now  you  can  tell  me,  what  was  terribly  puzzling  me, 
the  appropriate  thing  to  say  in  congratulation." 

To  a  friend  who  showed  him  at  the  Grosvenor 
Gallery  Wafts's  portrait  of  Swinburne:  "What  is  this 
youthful  version  of  an  unregenerate  Duke  of  Argyll?" 
The  allusion  was  to  the  eighth  Duke  of  Argyll. 

On  seeing  Lord  Ilartington  yawn  during  his 
maiden  speech:  "He'll  do."  Perhaps  this  gave  the 
hint  to  the  witty  authors  of  Wisdom  Wliile  You  Wait. 

139 


BENJAMIX    DISRAELI 

For  when  the  Insidecomplctuar  Britanniaicare  was 
thrust  on  Devonshire  House,  the  Duchess  implored: 
"Be  so  good  as  to  send  for  the  volumes  at  once:  we 
find  it  impossible  to  keep  the  Duke  awake." 

So  much  for  a  jest.  But  the  collector  of  Disraeli- 
ana  has  a  grave  tribute  to  pay  to  this  always  fair  and 
honorable  opponent  of  Disraeli — the  St.  Aldegonde  of 
Lothair,  drawn  by  Disraeli  with  no  unfriendly  hand. 
Amid  the  hurricane  of  reproaches  that  fell  upon  the 
Queen's  Favorite  Minister  during  the  Midlothian  cam- 
paign, one  voice  was  raised,  if  only  to  be  drowned,  in 
the  surrounding  clamor.  That  voice  was  Lord  Hart- 
ington's. 

"No  one  can  justly  attribute  any  mean  or  un- 
worthy motives  to  Lord  Beaconsfield.  I  firmly  believe 
that  he  has  had  in  view  what  he  believes  to  be  the 
greatness  of  his  country  and  the  power  of  the  Sov- 
ereign whom  he  serves." 

These  words,  spoken  toward  the  close  of  the  Gen- 
eral Election  of  1880,  when  it  was  already  clear  that 
the  Tory  party  was  worsted,  shall  pass  down  to  his- 
tory in  high  contrast  with  those  of  most  of  the  Liberal 
candidates  of  the  day.  The  gratitude  of  two  persons 
that  speaker  instantly  won — Disraeli's  own  and  that 
of  the  Queen,  who — let  it  be  noted,  as  it  should  be, 
in  this  connection — subsequently  wished  that  Lord 
Hartington,  not  Mr.  Gladstone,  should  form  the  Ad- 
ministration that  was  to  follow. 

Writing  to  me  more  than  twenty  years  after  the 
utterance  of  these  just  and,  under  the  conditions, 
generous  words,  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  (July,  1903) 

140 


IMPRESSIONS   AND   PORTRAITS 

says:  ''Nothing  that  has  since  happened  or  become 
known  has  induced  me  to  alter  in  any  degree  the 
opinion  which  I  then  expressed  of  Lord  Beaconsfleld's 
political  character  and  aims." 

Of  a  member  who  brought  forward  a  yearly  anti- 
Popery  motion:  "For  years  this  man  has  been  a  bore; 
he  has  now  become  an  institution." 

Disraeli's  apologetic  comment  when  a  statesman, 
who  was  also  a  man  of  many  asperities,  became  a 
Knight  of  the  Thistle,  and  was  under  smoking- 
room  criticism:  "He  is  a  Thistle;  and  yet  unreason- 
ing people  are  disappointed  that  they  do  not  gather 
figs." 

Similarly,  in  earlier  years  Disraeli  had  said  of  a 
pamphlet  by  his  impetuous  adversary.  Roebuck: 
"Crab-apples  grow  upon  crab-trees,  and  the  meager 
and  acid  mind  i)roduces  the  meager  and  acid 
pamphlet." 

To  a  Princess  of  impulsive  patriotism  (Mary  of 
Cambridge),  who,  wishing  the  Government  to  make 
a  move  against  Russia,  said  to  the  Prime  Minister  at 
a  dinner-party,  "I  can  not  imagine  what  you  are 
waiting  for":     "Potatoes,  at  this  moment,  madam." 

To  Cardinal  Manning:  "I  say  Tory.  I  do  not  say 
Conservative — it  is  too  long  a  word." 

"I  think  you  must  be  my  Impresario."  In  his 
reading  of  men,  Disraeli  was  not  only  very  accurate, 
but  also  very  rapid;  and  in  one  case  at  least  a  casual 
meeting  of  his  in  a  country  house  with  a  man  much 
his  junior  led  to  a  long  and  close  association.  It  was 
at  Raby  in  the  time  of  the  last  Duke  of  Cleveland; 

141 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

and  the  album  of  the  house  contained  a  sentiment, 
put  there  in  a  happy  couplet  by  Lord  Bennet: 

What  a  pity  at  Raby 
There  isn't  a  baby. 

And  that,  though  not  in  a  literal  sense,  was  the  opin- 
ion of  the  girls  of  the  house-party  one  wet  afternoon. 

Sundays  are  dull  in  country  houses:  we  have  St. 
Aldegonde's  word  for  it;  but  wet  week-days  can  be 
very  dull  too,  within  and  without.  On  this  particular 
afternoon — a  very  particular  afternoon  in  the  lives 
of  two  people — a  group  of  young  ladies  insisted  upon 
being  amused;  and,  having  no  actual  baby  in  hand, 
they  seized  on  a  young  man  with  a  reputation  for 
gravity  and  wisdom,  and  insisted  on  his  becoming 
a  juvenile  for  their  sakes.  He  was  to  organize 
charades;  and,  first  of  all,  was  made  to  dance  a  break- 
down and  to  sing  a  comic  song  to  the  accompaniment 
of  the  rattle  of  his  heels  upon  the  floor.  The  very 
incongruity  between  the  man  and  the  fooling  gave 
license  to  the  fun.  With  simplicity — like  that  of  the 
earlier  follower  of  St.  Francis  who  went  on  all  fours 
to  be  a  fool  for  Christ's  sake,  and  let  the  pompous 
people  sneer,  yet  added  the  Stahat  Mater  to  the  great 
poetry  of  the  Church — he  stooped  to  folly  and  raised 
mirth.  In  the  midst  of  the  frolic  he  looked  up  and 
saw  the  face  of  Disraeli  in  the  doorway. 

His  first  meeting  with  the  Minister,  the  night  be- 
fore, had  been  an  event  in  his  life.  The  Minister  had 
received  him  cordially,  saying:  "I  had  a  great  respect 
for  your  father."    And  now,  on  this  afternoon,  when 

142 


IiMPUESSIONS   AND   PORTRAITS 

he  was  supposed  to  have  gone  to  his  chamber  for 
letter-writiug,  the  Minister  was  witness  of  this  farce; 
and  the  willing  yet  unwilling  performer  heard  in  mem- 
ory one  sentence  that  choked  his  song:  "I  had  a  great 
respect  for  your  father."  "And  what  a  fool  he  must 
think  me!''  was  his  reflection  as  he  ceased  at  once  his 
dance  and  shout  with  a  deferential  gesture  toward 
the  onlooker — always  the  onlooker.  The  girls,  bent 
with  laughter,  cried  out  to  him  to  go  on;  and,  yielding 
to  their  entreaties,  he  submitted  to  continue  his  per- 
formance. The  Minister  remained  for  another  min- 
ute or  two,  his  face  betraying  neither  amusement  nor 
vexation.  Then  he  turned  his  back  on  the  revels  and 
took  refuge  in  his  room.  "He  had  a  respect  for  my 
father,  and  what  a  fool  he  must  think  me!"  was  the 
improvised  entertainer's  haunting  reflection  for  the 
rest  of  the  tedious  afternoon. 

After  dinner  that  evening,  when  the  others  passed 
out  of  the  dining-room,  Disraeli  waited  for  the  young 
man,  now  grave  even  beyond  his  custom.  He  ex- 
pected one  of  two  things — either  to  receive  an  ad- 
monition or  to  be  treated  with  candor  as  a  farceur. 
The  Minister's  hand  was  on  his  shoulder,  and  the 
words  came:  "I  think  you  must  be  my  Impresario." 
The  Minister  had  seen  in  him  one  who  was  sensitive 
yet  compliant;  he  knew  his  man;  and  the  tie  thus  be- 
gun— perhaps  the  closest  he  had,  except  only  that 
which  marriage  brought  him — endured  until  the  end. 

Coleridge,  addressing  a  scoffing  crowd  at  Bristol, 
said:  "When  on  the  burning  embers  of  Democracy 
you  throw  the  cold  waters  of  reason,  the  result  is  a 

143 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

hiss."  Disraeli,  quoting  this,  declared  to  Bernal  Os- 
borne: "That  retort,  made  to  an  Athenian  mob, 
would  have  prevailed;  and  I  would  rather  have  been 
the  author  of  it  than  of  half  my  speeches." 

To  Cardinal  Manning,  who  said  to  him,  "You  have 
always  venerated  the  Creeds,  yet  you  are  now  praised 
in  all  the  reviews  of  Lothair  for  that  formula-annulling 
levity:  'All  sensible  men  are  of  one  religion.'  'What 
is  that?'  'Sensible  men  never  tell'":  "Oh,  but  that 
was  surely  the  saying  of  a  distinguished  Bishop  of 
your  Church — Talleyrand?" 

"Then  we  will  make  him  Lord  High  Commissioner 
to  the  Church  of  Scotland."  This  was  said  when  Lord 
Kosslyn's  claims  for  a  Government  recognition  were 
under  discussion,  and  when  somebody  said  that  he  was 
a  good  swearer.  Lord  Rosslyn  might  have  had  the 
Mastership  of  the  Horse,  or  anything  he  liked,  had 
Disraeli  foreseen  his  benefactions  to  mankind.  But 
they  were  still  hidden  in  school-room  or  the  nursery. 

"Of  course  I  am  gratified — you  know  my  tender 
feeling  for  all  women."  Thus  Disraeli  to  a  lord-in- 
The  "Gaiety"  waiting,  under  rather  whimiscal  circum- 
of  Nations.  stances,  in  the  seventies,  what  time  the 
Russian  Bear  was  suspected  of  sharpening  his  claws. 
Princess  Louise  also  happened  to  be  crossing  the  seas 
to  or  from  Canada.  It  was  Sunday;  a  breeze  blew 
about  Windsor  Castle;  and  the  Queen  expressed  anx- 
iety as  to  the  state  of  winds  and  waves  in  mid- Atlan- 
tic. A  lord-in-waiting  said  he  knew  a  Fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society,  a  weather-diviner,  who  would  give  the 

144 


THE   "GAIETY"   OF   NATIONS 

word.  He  would  go  to  get  it,  if  her  Majesty  wished. 
Her  Majesty  did  wisli;  and  she  further  entrusted  her 
pursuivanl  with  a  message  for  Lord  Beacousfield.  The 
lord-in-waiting  was  sent  from  the  Professor's  house 
to  a  supper  of  Gaiety  girls,  and  there  found  him  in  this 
lively  company,  being  himself  constrained  to  listen 
to  the  game  of  words  that  was  passing  round.  The 
problem  for  the  ladies  was :  Which  would  they  choose 
if  they  had  to  marry — Gladstone  or  Disraeli?  All 
elected  Disraeli  save  one;  who  was  much  frowned  on 
by  the  company  until  she  explained:  "Gladstone,  so 
that  I  might  elope  with  Disraeli  and  break  Glad- 
stone's heart.'' 

The  lord-in-waiting,  much  diverted,  went  forth, 
and  finding  Disraeli  in  low  spirits,  told  him  this  tale, 
as  an  instance  of  his  great  popularity  with  all  classes. 
"I  come,"  he  said,  "from  the  Queen,  w^ho  holds  you 
highest  in  the  land,  and  from  dancing-girls  who  adore 
you." 

The  whimsicality  of  the  thing  was  congenial  to 
Disraeli.  "Of  course  I  am  gratified,"  he  said,  greatly 
comforted;  and  next  day  showed  that  indeed  he  was. 
A  Cabinet  Council,  summoned  for  noon,  was  kept 
waiting  for  the  arrival  of  a  Minister — the  Duke  of 
Riclimondjibelieve.  To  pass  thetime,Disraeli  told  his 
assembled  colleagues  the  story  of  the  theatrical  sup- 
per— just  to  show,  he  said,  what  unexpected  friends 
they  all  had.  Lord  Cairns  (ahsit  omen!),  hearing,  did 
not  smile;  and  his  solemnity  put  out  of  countenance 
the  Prime  Minister,  who  therefore  made  the  continued 
absence  of  a  colleague  an  excuse  for  postponing  the 
11  145 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Council  for  a  couple  of  hours.  The  "balance  of 
power"  was  then  unstable  as  quicksilver;  and  that 
afternoon  the  papers  had  headings :  "War  Imminent : 
A  Second  Cabinet  Council  summoned."'  Wires 
throbbed  under  the  tidings;  the  Stock  Exchange 
shivered;  the  Paris  Bourse  sensitively  responded;  all 
Europe  felt  the  thrill.  The  Gaiety  girls  (as  the 
Minister  reflected,  and  with  no  qualm),  for  the  first 
and  last  time  in  their  lives,  through  a  chance  associa- 
tion with  him,  had  made  history:  their  theater  was 
at  last  the  "Gaiety"  of  nations. 

"What  is  the  difference  between  a  misfortune  and 

a  calamity?" — somebody  asked  a  new  definition  from 

Disraeli.     The  questioner,  being  no  liter- 

Gladstoniana. 

alist,  but  a  man  of  liberal  understanding, 
got  the  reply:  "W^ell,  if  Gladstone  fell  into  the 
Thames,  that  would  be  a  misfortune;  and  if  anybody 
pulled  him  out,  that,  I  suppose,  would  be  a  calamity." 

To  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  remarked  across  the 
table  of  the  House,  "We  were  sincere  in  all  we 
did":  "I  never  doubted  your  sincerity,  only  your 
ability." 

This  seems  an  echo  of  the  old  taunt  he  had  ad- 
dressed to  a  foe  in  early  life:  "I  am  bound  to  furnish 
my  antagonists  with  arguments,  but  not  with  com- 
prehension." 

Again  across  the  table  of  the  House  of  Commons 
to  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  come  to  an  involuntary 
pause:  "Your  last  word — 'Revolution.'  "  Canon  Mac- 
Coll,  I  should  add,  disputes  this  story,  which  he  traces 

146 


THE   rUlMUOSE 

to  a  reminder  once  given  by  Disraeli  to  Gladstone  that 
his  last  word  was  "satellites." 

"A  man  of  splendid  abilities,  hampered  by  his 
Church  liaisons."  This,  to  Mr.  Espinasse,  when 
Gladstone  was  still  member  for  the  University  of  Ox- 
ford. Gladstone,  going  to  Lancashire,  later  made  the 
admission:  "Gentlemen,  I  stand  before  you  un- 
muzzled." 

''Almost  a  stateman.  Not  redeemed  by  a  single 
vice." 

On  hearing  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  excellent 
form  as  the  guest  of  Lady  Cowper  at  Wrest  Park 
(November,  1879),  Lord  Beaconsfield,  who  was  not 
above  a  pun,  said:  "Doubtless  he  thinks  that  I,  the 
wicked,  will  cease  from  troubling  while  he,  the  weary, 
is  at  Wrest." 

In  a  letter  (still  unpublished)  addressed  to  a  friend 
at  the  time  of  Gladstone's  retirement  from  the  Gov- 
ernment, Lord  Beaconsfield  says  he  rejoices  that  "the 
casting  out 'of  evil  spirits  is  not,  after  all,  a  thing 
of  the  past." 

"Gladstone  treats  the  Queen  like  a  public  depart- 
ment— I  treat  her  like  a  woman." 

"My  favorite  primrose,"  said  Lord  Beaconsfield  in 

1878  to  Dean  Pigou.    It  is,  however.  Queen  Victoria's 

inscription,    "His   favorite   flower,"   that 

The  Primrose. 

has  associated  the  primrose  (in  bloom  at 
the  time  of  his  death)  memorially  with  his  name. 

"Let  us  go  to  the  Faun."  One  of  the  trees  in  the 
Green  Park  Lord  Beaconsfield,  in  allusion  to  its  sug- 

147 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

gestive  shape,  called  ''the  Faun";  aud  in  the  early 
summer  each  year,  during  his  later  life,  Lord  Beacons- 
field  would  say  to  Lord  Kowton:   *'Let  us 

The  Faun. 

go  to  the  Faun/'  Casual  passers-by  won- 
dered to  see  the  Minister  with  his  secretary  "worship- 
ing'' at  this  sylvan  shrine.  ("I  am  not  surprised  that 
the  ancients  worshiped  trees''  is  a  phrase  found  in 
one  of  his  latest  letters.)  Together  they  went,  and, 
when  one  was  taken,  the  survivor  continued  year  after 
year  his  summer  pilgrimage  to  that  London-skirted 
shrine. 

''It  will  see  me  out."    This  he  said  when  in  1880  he 

took  a  nine  years'  lease  of  the  Curzon  Street  house 

in  which,  only  nine  months  later,  he  died. 

Habitations. 

It  may  be  of  service  here  to  give  such  a 
register  as  it  is  now  possible  to  make  of  the  successive 
houses  occupied  by  Disraeli  in  town — a  list  perhaps 
convenient  to  autograph  collectors  and  others,  some- 
times puzzled  by  a  hieroglyphic  or  a  hasty  capital 
letter  to  indicate  the  winter's  whereabouts — such  as 
''B.  S."  for  Downing  Street,  "G.  G."  for  Grosvenor 
Gate,  "C.  C."  for  the  Carlton  Club,  and  so  forth. 

1804-1817:  6  King's  Eoad,  Holborn,  now  (1903) 
Theobalds  Road. 

1817-1829:  6  Bloomsbury  Square,  often  renum- 
bered in  the  interval,  biLt  again  in  1887  restored  to 
its  old  number,  6. 

February,  1832  (after  his  return  from  prolonged 
travels),  he  describes  himself  as  "comfortably  located 
in  Duke  Street,  St.  James's." 

148 


COMPLIMENTS 

May,  1835:  oIa  Turk  Street,  Urosveiior  {Square, 
after  sojouruing"  at  No.  3  in  the  same  street  as  his 
father's  guest  for  some  mouths. 

January,  183G:    34  Upper  Grosveuor  Street. 

1839-1872:     Grosveuor  Gate  (now  29  l*ark  Lane). 

1873:  2  Whitehall  Gardens,  a  delightful  house, 
now  ^yorthily  occupied  by  Messrs.  A.  Constable  &  Co. 

1874:    10  Downing  Street. 

1880:  After  a  brief  tenancy  in  Charles  Street, 
Grosveuor  Square,  he  took  the  house  in  Curzon  Street 
(No.  19)  where,  in  the  following  spring,  more  i)unctual 
to  his  word  than  he  had  expected,  he  passed  away. 

Lord  Beaconsfield,  while  his  title  was  still  fresh, 

was  surprised  in  the  street  by  the  bow  of  a  lady  whom 

he  failed  to  recognize.    "Who  is  she?"  he 

Compliments. 

asked  of  the  companion  on  whose  arm  he 
leant.  "Lady  Sebright."  Anxious  to  atone,  he  half 
turned  round  to  the  lady,  who  was  half  turning  to 
him,  and  who  then  ran  forward  and  said: 

"How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Disraeli?  Oh,  I  beg  pardon, 
Lord  Beaconsfield." 

"Of  what  use  is  my  coronet  to  me,  my  dear  lady, 
so  long  as  Sir  John  is  alive?" 

Sir  William  Eraser's  version  is  characteristic  of 
Sir  William  Fraser.  "On  his  first  becoming  Premier 
the  wife  of  Sir  X.  Y,  stepped  from  her  brougham  in 
St.  James's  Street,  and  effusively  said:  'You  are  at 
last  in  your  right  place,  where  you  ought  to  be.'  Dis- 
raeli, who  could  not  have  liked  this  open-air  demon- 
stration, at  once  replied:    'What  is  the  good  of  it  all, 

149 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

so  long  as  Sir  X.  lives.' "  Possibly  the  Tory  member 
who  recently  quoted  the  story  to  me  in  illustration  of 
Disraeli's  humbug  knew  it  only  in  the  Fraser  version. 
The  authentic  version  supplies  the  otherwise  missing 
motive — Disraeli's  desire  to  make  gallant  amends  for 
his  first  forgetfulness  of  the  lady. 

A  Chinese  Ambassador,  having  expressed  regret, 
through  the  Embassy  interpreter,  that  he  could  not 
speak  English,  Disraeli  said  to  the  interpreter:  "Pray 
beg  the  Ambassador  to  remain  in  this  country  until 
I  can  speak  Chinese." 

Probably  these  were  the  same  Chinese  Ambassa- 
dor and  his  interpreter  whom  Browning  met  at  about 
this  date.  The  interpreter  said  that  his  Excellency 
and  the  Englishman  were  brother  poets.  "Eh?"  said 
Browning,  looking  with  new  interest  at  the  Celestial, 
doubly  fathered  by  Phoebus, 

"Giver  of  golden  days  and  golden  song." 

"Yes,"  said  the  interpreter,  "he  writes  enigmas." 

"A  brother  indeed,"  cried  Browning.  But  the 
written  story  fails  for  lack  of  the  laugh  the  poet 
laughed  in  the  telling  of  it. 

On  sitting  beside  Georgina,  Lady  Dudley,  and  see- 
ing her  hold  out  her  arm:    "Canova!" 

Disraeli  was  in  some  moods  a  dealer  in  few  words; 
so  that  Lady  Bulwer-Lytton,  who  introduces  him 
under  a  thin  disguise  in  one  of  her  novels,  makes  him 
so  much  of  an  economist  of  words  as  to  say  "Morn- 
ing," for  "Good  morning."  He  was  of  her  husband's 
friends;  therefore,  the  poor  lady  thought,   none  of 

150 


DIVERSIONS 

hers;  so  that  when  he  sat  iu  impressionable  velvet 
upon  a  cane-chair,  she  felt  very  happy  in  saying  that 
"he  bore  upon  hiiu  the  brand  of  Cain." 

Toward  the  end  of  his  life,  Disraeli's  face  had  the 
almost  comatose  aspect  which  Millais  has  too  pain- 
fully preserved;  and  then  Madame  de  Murrieta 
(Marquesa  de  Santurce)  was  one  of  the  few  people 
able  by  her  inspiriting  presence  to  rouse  him  from  his 
lethargy.  On  the  occasion  of  a  Rothschild  wedding 
where  he  and  she  w^ere  neighbors  among  the  guests, 
she  noticed  with  concern  that  the  jewels  and  "ropes 
of  pearls''  among  the  wedding  presents  did  not,  as 
of  old,  kindle  a  light  in  the  eye  of  Israel.  He  sat  in 
an  abstraction  that  bordered  upon  death.  A  person- 
age then  approached  the  Marquesa,  praised  the 
precious  stones,  gorgeous  as  the  Hebrew  dreams  of 
New  Jerusalem,  and  added  with  gallantry:  "But  your 
eyes  send  them  all  into  the  shade." 

"And  call  me  out  of  the  shades,"  interposed  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  with  a  sudden  animation  that  made  him 
what  the  experienced  Marquesa  said  she  had  of  old 
found  him  to  be — the  most  finished  and  fastidious 
talker  in  town. 

Disraeli  was  a  fair  hand  at  whist — a  game  in  which 

he  was  sharpened  by  his  early  friend,  Clay,  who  wrote 

a  book   about   it.     Ele  is  remembered  at 

Diversions. 

Lamington  as  playing  with  the  daughters 
of  the  house;  and  it  was  his  custom  to  address  to  them 
little  notes  which  he  very  irregularly  threw  across 
the  table — a  real  diversion.    For  orire  he  was  a  player 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

with  distractions.  Lady  Lainington's  memory  of  him 
as  a  talker  is  that  he  was  a  man  of  moods:  sometimes 
silent,  but  sometimes  overflowing  with  anecdote,  epi- 
gram, and  h^'perbole;  also  that  he  was  drawn  out  by 
women  rather  than  by  men.  The  late  Mr.  Christopher 
Sykes  used  to  remark  that  whereas  Gladstone  good- 
naturedly  overflowed  to  everybody,  Disraeli  talked  as 
an  opportunist — awaiting  the  favorable  time  and 
place  and  audience  for  the  production  of  his  good 
things.  He  himself  somewhere  has  an  agreeabl}^ 
ironic  allusion  to  Kensington  Gardens  as  a  haunt 
where  we  not  onh^  polish  our  perorations,  but  "^pre- 
pare our  impromptus." 

Though  an  intrepid  rider  in  youth,  and  a  good  shot, 
Disraeli  knew  his  duty  to  the  country,  in  a  great  sense, 
too  well  to  make  the  hunting-field  his  arena.  Perhaps 
he  never  taunted  any  sportsman  among  his  followers 
as  George  II  once  taunted  a  Duke  of  Grafton,  with 
"spending  all  his  time  in  tormenting  a  poor  fox  that 
was  generally  a  much  better  beast  than  any  of  the 
brutes  that  pursued  him.''  Nevertheless,  one  of  his 
most  satisfying  triumphs  was  his  success  in  persuad- 
ing Lord  George  Bentinck  to  give  up  to  Parliament 
and  Protection  the  time  he  had  devoted  to  his  stables. 
As  years  advanced  Disraeli's  appearances  in  the  field 
might  be  counted  on  five  fingers.  In  1853,  when  he 
was  the  guest  of  his  great  friend.  Lord  Galway,  at 
Serlb}^,  he  was  persuaded  to  go  out  fox-hunting. 
Three  cheers  were  given  by  the  tenant-farmers  of 
Notts  for  their  great  advocate  and  friend.  With  Lord 
Wilton,  too,  he  rode  to  hounds   in  18G9;   and   again 

152 


Si,,     li)    (TRZOX    STUKirr,    MAYIAIR 
The  house  wliich  was  lakcii  liy  Disraeli  in  l.SS(),  and  in  whic  h  lie  lUecl  in  ISSl. 


'/V 


OF  THE 


DIVERSIONS 

won  phiiulits  for  the  courage  he  showed  iu  takiug  the 
saddle  alter  loug  absteutiou — a  sore  experieDce  it 
was  to  him  very  literally. 

During  a  visit  in  1873  to  Lamington,  the  Scottish 
seat  of  his  former  fellow  Young  Englander,  Mr.  Baillie 
Cochrane  (whom  he  sent  to  the  Upper  House  as  Lord 
Lamington),  Disraeli  was  called  upon  to  plant  a  con- 
ifer, lie  threw  a  shilling  into  the  pit  prepared  for  the 
planting:  ''To  bring  fortune  to  the  family" — fortune 
which  took  the  form  of  the  second  Lord  Lamington's 
high  ability  to  serve  his  country  as  Governor  of 
Queensland.  On  the  occasion  of  that  planting,  as 
Lady  Lamington  remembers,  her  big  dog  ran  out, 
brushed  against  Disraeli  and  grazed  his  leg  against  a 
wall.  He  was  already  gouty,  and  that  evening,  as  a 
result  of  the  bruise,  of  which  he  made  light  at  the  mo- 
ment, he  was  obliged  to  keep  to  his  room. 

Lady  Lamington's  daughter,  Constance,  Countess 
De  la  Warr,  remembers  another  rural  scene,  with  the 
touch  of  Courts  about  it  to  endear  it  the  more  to  the 
heart  of  Lord  Beaconsfield.  He  was  her  guest  at 
Buckhurst  (her  father,  by  an  odd  coincidence,  had, 
long  before  her  marriage,  been  accorded  the  name  of 
Buckhurst  in  Coniiu/shi/)  and  there  was  a  daily  lunch 
in  the  woods.  Once,  as  they  sat  down,  the  sylvan 
solitude  was  further  disturbed.  The  jingle  of  harness, 
soft  in  the  distance  as  Titania's  belts,  and  unexpected 
as  those  horn-blasts  which  disturbed  the  Bavarian 
woodman's  midnight  dreams  what  time  King  Otto 
went  a-hunting,  was  heard  by  the  astonished  party 
at  luncheon.    In  reply  to  an  exclamation  of  the  host- 

153 


■■m^i^lSP 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ess  Disraeli  explained:  "It  is  a  Queen's  Messenger 
in  quest  of  me.  Loving  the  incongruous,  I  gave  in- 
structions that  he  was  to  find  me  for  State  business 
in  a  forest."  That  Queen's  Messenger  seems  to  step 
straight  into  our  midst  from  the  pages  of  Disraelian 
romance.  Other  authors  go  to  society  for  their  epi- 
sodes. Disraeli,  for  his  own  social  inspirations,  fre- 
quently went  to  his  novels.  He  himself  made  his 
characters  credible;  for,  if  he  did  not  go  to  life  for 
them  in  the  first  instance,  he  himself  lived  the  novels 
he  had  written. 

Well  had  he  himself  said:  "A  literary  man  who 
is  a  man  of  action  is  a  two-edged  weapon;  nor  should 
it  be  forgotten  that  Julius  Caesar  and  Frederick  the 
Great  were  both  eminent  literary  characters,  and  yet 
were  perhaps  the  two  most  distinguished  men  of 
action  of  ancient  and  modern  times."  Equally  could 
one  conceive  of  either  of  them  fighting  a  battle  to 
bear  out  a  book  or  writing  a  book  to  make  record 
of  a  battle.  Disraeli  in  life  constantly  blended  fiction 
with  fact,  and  fact  with  fiction.  If  Waterloo  was  won 
on  the  playing-fields  of  Eton,  the  title  Beaconsfield 
was  taken  in  the  early  chapters  of  Vivian  Grej/,  and 
Cyprus  annexed  and  the  Queen  made  Empress  of 
India  in  the  pages  of  Tamred.  Well,  in  one  respect, 
did  Mr.  Balfour  say  to  a  lady  who  longed  to  meet 
Dizzy  that  he  was  but  "a  brazen  mask  speaking  his 
own  novels." 

To  the  Hon.  Reginald  Brett:  "I  never  trouble  to 
be  avenged.    When  a  man  injures  me,  I  put  his  name 

154 


TIMES   REVENGES 

on    a   slip   of   paper   and   lock   it   up   in   a    drawer. 
Time's  It  is  uiarvelous  how  the  men  I  have  thus 

Revenges.  labeled  have  the  knack  of  disappearing." 
An  anecdote  for  which  I  am  indebted  to  the  Poet 
Laureate  makes  a  delightful  sequel  to  this  saying.  It 
shows  us  the  fairer  side  of  the  medal.  Sir  John 
Pope-llennessj,  in  early  youth,  conceived  a  romantic 
admiration  for  Disraeli  and  wrote  to  him  a  letter 
couched  somewhat  in  the  strain  of  that  in  which  Mag- 
gie Tulliver  told  Sir  Walter  how  clever  she  was  and 
how  unhappy.  The  Irish  boy's  letter  to  Disraeli  end- 
ed, "/  Jove  you.^'  Xo  answer  came:  Disraeli's  rule  of 
no  reply  was  all  but  inexorable.  Did  he  put  the 
names,  too,  of  these  ardent  acolytes  away  in  that 
drawer,  beside  those  of  his  detractors?  Certain  it  is, 
that  immediately  Pope-Hennessy  made  his  first  ad- 
venturous attack  on  an  Irish  seat,  and  w^as  rewarded 
by  success,  a  messenger  came  down  to  his  chambers 
in  the  Temple  bearing  a  missive  from  Disraeli.  It 
was  a  hasty  summons  to  a  Parliamentary  dinner  the 
next  night,  where  all  others  around  the  board  were 
senators  of  experience.  The  after  career  of  "the 
Pope"  as  a  Colonial  Governor  of  Disraeli's  making 
was  full  of  romantic  incidents,  hinting  at  universal 
rather  than  official  sympathies,  and  a  disposition  to 
make  war,  not  on  native  races,  but  on  Downing 
Street. 

'^I  find  the  greatest  repose  in  solitude,"  he  said 
at  Hughenden,  toward  his  life's  close,  to  Janetta, 
Duchess  of  TiUtlaud.    This  became  the  abiding  mood; 

155 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

but  it  was  not  a  solitude  that  is  vacancy;  it  was 
peopled;  it  was  the  "never  less  alone  than  when  alone" 
Alone  in  the  of  Cardinal  Xewman.  He  enjoyed  peace 
Country.  — with    houor;    a    repose   that    was    not 

paralysis;  a  resting  on,  rather  than  from,  his  labors; 
books  were  always  his  friends,  and  they  now  became 
his  company  at  dinner,  with  a  pause  for  ten  minutes' 
reading  between  each  course.  The  mistress  of  Hugh- 
enden  was  no  more,  but  memories  of  her  were  all 
about  him;  and  he  could  take  in  retrospect  the  pleas- 
ure she  had  once  shared  with  him  in  his  woods  and 
fields;  in  those  beloved  juniper  bushes;  in  the  pea- 
cocks, not  more  proud  of  themselves  than  he  was 
proud  of  them;  in  the  starlight,  wherein  he  walked  to 
the  accompaniment  of  bats;  in  the  sunshine,  which 
had  been  his  very  life  in  youth;  and  in  the  round 
of  seasons,  rough  and  sweet,  subtly  charged  for 
mourning  man  with  ever  new  uncovenanted  com- 
l)ensations. 

"I  have  scarcely  exchanged  a  word  with  any  one 
for  three  weeks;  ^  but  the  delight  of  living  in  the 
country  in  summer  is  ever  new  to  me:  I  perpetually 
discover  fresh  charms." 

This,  too,  was  said  to  the  same  friend,  doubly  en- 
deared to  Lord  Beaconsfield  for  her  husband's  sake 
and  her  own.  She  bore  witness  to  the  wide  sympathy 
with  which  he  looked  out  on  the  world,  and  the  re- 
ward which  nature  gave  to  him,  as  to  all  townsmen 
who  "go  seek  her,  find  her,  and  are  friends  again": 

'  Again,   he  wrote  during  his  widowerhood  to  the  Duchess  from  lonely 
Hughenden  :  "  I  have  not  spoken  to  a  human  being  for  a  fortnight." 

156 


THK  i:ari.  oi'  wii/ioN  siiows  i)lzz^    iiii;  iniiAoii!  hounds, 

1SC,!», 


By  pertuissiun  of  Messrs.  Archil  mid  Constuhlc  it'  Co.,  Ltd. 


THE    BEGINNING   OF   THE   END 

"He  delighted  iu  flowers,  from  the  violet  and  prim- 
rose to  the  gardeuia  or  the  rare  orchid.  Beautiful 
faces,  soft  voices,  children's  ways,  even  if  sometimes 
rather  like  what  we  hear  of  Puck,  refreshed  him." 
No  understanding  of  Disraeli  as  looker-on  or  prime 
actor  in  life  will  be  intelligent  unless  this  element  of 
"Puckishness"  be  taken  in  count.  The  Duchess  con- 
tinues: "Lord  Beaconsfield  seemed  to  find  pleasure 
in  the  commonest  beauties — the  luxuriance  of  the 
grass,  even  the  apparent  comfort  of  the  cattle  in  the 
rich  pastures.  He  spent  much  time  in  the  open  air. 
Like  John  Evelyn,  he  found  constant  interest  in  trees 
and  the  theoretical  part  of  woodcraft." 

"It  pains  me  to  see  it:  take  it  away."  The  capacity 
for  pleasure  implies  (alas,  in  what  disproportion!)  the 
capacity  for  pain.  One  day  Lord  Beaconsfield,  walk- 
ing in  Hughenden  Park  with  Janetta,  Duchess  of  Rut- 
land, was  accosted  by  a  daft  rustic,  to  whom  he  had 
gladly  given  the  liberty  of  his  demesne.  "Lord  Bea- 
consfield," his  companion  afterward  recorded,  "spoke 
in  a  particularly  kind  manner  and  listened  to  his 
story.  The  poor  old  man  rambled  in  his  talk  about 
a  dead  bird  he  had  found  and  carried  in  his  hand. 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  after  looking  at  the  bird,  said:  'It 
pains  me  to  see  it:  take  it  away.'  " 

"I  must  speak  at  once" — the  message  he  sent  to 
Lord  Granville  across  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Lords 
The  Beginning  during  an  early  stage  of  the  debate  on 
of  the  End.  |jj^  Gladstone  Government's  abandon- 
ment of  Candahar  on  March  5,  1881. 

157 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

At  the  fag-end  of  his  life,  you  may  say  he  was  im- 
patient for  the  first  time.  The  "I  can  wait"  of  his 
early  school-days,  and  the  "they  may  wait"  of  his  ap- 
prenticeship in  the  House  of  Commons,  expressed  the 
twofold  spirit  in  which,  five  years  earlier,  he  had  en- 
tered on  his  duties  in  the  House  of  Lords. 

"Your  lordships  will  remember,"  said  Lord  Gran- 
ville, after  the  passing  away  of  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
and  in  illustration  of  his  powers  of  patience  and  self- 
control,  "how  silent  and  reticent  he  was  at  first,  until 
an  unfounded  accusation  gave  him  an  opportunity'  of 
making  a  speech,  which  at  once  established  the  hold 
on  this  House  which  he  had  so  long  maintained  in 
another  place."  But  now  was  no  time  for  delay, 
though  it  was  still  the  time  for  self-repression.  Lord 
Granville's  word  reached  home  oncejnore:  "At  ten 
o'clock  on  the  second  evening  of  the  Afghan  debate, 
Lord  Beaconsfield  sent  me  word  that  he  must  speak 
at  once.  I  sent  back  a  strong  remonstrance.  Two 
noble  lords  who  formerly  held  office,  and  a  third  with 
remarkable  power  of  speaking,  wished  to  take  part  in 
the  debate.  Lord  Beaconsfield,  however,  persisted, 
and,  in  following  him,  I  complained  to  your  lordships 
of  what  he  had  done.  I  thought  at  the  time  I  was 
justified  in  that  complaint;  but  it  is  with  regret  that 
I  have  since  learned  that  just  before  my  remonstrance 
Lord  Beaconsfield  had  swallowed  one  drug  and  in- 
haled another  in  quantities  nicely  calculated  to  free 
him  from  his  suffering  during  the  time  required  for 
his  speech." 

The  double  Lord  Beaconsfield  indeed:  the  man  of 

158 


A   COUNSEL   OF   TEIU  ECTION 

pli3'sital  courage,  whoui  pain  could  not  quell;  the  man 
of  moral  courage  who,  rather  than  parade,  or  even 
plead,  his  claim  to  a  place  on  the  political  martyr- 
ologj  of  England,  preferred  to  be  lectured,  lamented 
over,  and  misunderstood. 

The  twelfth  Duke  of  Somerset,  in  1878,  looking 
near  half  a  century  backward,  said:  ''Many  years 
The  Proces-  'i&o,  wheu  Disraeli  was  dining  with  me, 
sion's  Close,  before  he  was  in  Parliament,  we  were 
talking  of  'What  was  the  most  desirable  life?'  and 
he  said  he  considered  the  most  desirable  life  to  be 
'A  continued  grand  procession  from  manhood  to  the 
tomb.'  *' 

He  had  his  desire. 

It  is  interesting  to  recall  Disraeli's  own  record  of 
a  dinner — perhaps  the  very  occasion  of  this  visionary 
pronouncement — with  the  Duke,  then  Lord  St.  ]Maur, 
so  far  back  as  the  June  of  1833: 

"I  dined  yesterday  with  the  St.  Maurs  to  meet  Mrs. 
Sheridan"  (the  grandmother  of  Lady  St.  Maur).  "An 
agreeable  part^^;  and  Mrs.  Blackwood  and  Brinsley. 
Lord  St.  Maur,  great  talent,  which  develops  itself  in 
a  domestic  circle,  though  otherwise  shy-mannered." 

It  was  this  shyness  which  never  deserted  him,  to- 
gether with  an  unerring  reticence  and  a  dignified 
restraint  stoics  might  envy,  that  gained  for  him  the 
sobriquet  of  "the  proud  Duke  of  Somerset." 

A  Counsel  of  T()  his  best  friend,  as  a  last  direction 

Perfection.        before  liis  death:    "Never  defend  me." 

159 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"I  have  no  strength  left — let  us  return."  To  Lord 
Barrington  the  words  were  spoken  by  Lord  Beacons- 
The  Last  field    in   the   east-wundy   March   of   1881, 

Illness.  during   a    walk   in   the   neighborhood   of 

Curzon  Street — the  last  before  the  Minister  took  to 
bed.  Five  weeks  later,  the  attack  of  bronchitis,  an 
expression  of  gout,  and  attended  by  spasmodic  asth- 
ma, closed  his  life.  Lord  Rowton  having  accompanied 
his  sister,  who  was  seriously  ill,  to  the  South  of 
France,  Lord  Barrington  was  in  charge  of  the  Chief. 
More  than  once  during  their  walks  together  the  Min- 
ister exhibited  evident  signs  of  exhaustion,  such  as 
these  quoted  words  express.  Once,  indeed,  he  had 
to  support  himself  by  holding  on  to  the  iron  railings 
of  a  house  he  w^as  passing;  and  but  for  the  assistance 
of  Lord  Barrington's  arm  would  have  been  unable  to 
get  home.  Having  taken  to  his  bed,  he  was  never 
able  to  leave  it,  except  in  moments  when  the  muscular 
debility  w^iich  commonly  overcame  him  seemed  to 
lift,  and  to  leave  him  in  possession  of  a  delusive  en- 
ergy of  body  matching  that  energy  of  will  which  even 
yet  no  bodily  lassitude  could  quench. 

''But  how  is  it  to  be  arranged  with  Kidd?''  The 
question  was  put  by  Lord  Beaconsfield  when,  in  the 
early  stages  of  his  fatal  illness,  he  was  urged  by  Sir 
Philip  Rose  to  call  in  Quain.^  Sir  Philip  was  not  the 
Minister's  lawyer  only;  he  was  also  his  friend;  he  had 
been  on  the  point  of  starting  for  Pau  when,  hearing 

1  Afterward  Sir  Richard  Quain.  He  was  born  at  Mallow  in  1816,  and 
died  at  the  age  of  eighty-two,  leaving  no  heir  to  the  baronetcy  conferred  on 
liim  seven  years  earlier  in  recognition  of  his  services  to  members  of  the  Royal 
Family. 

160 


THE   LAST   ILLNESS 

the  grave  uews  Irom  Curzoii  Street,  he  hastened 
thither.  JSir  Thilip,  knowing  that  Dr.  Kidd,  a  homeo- 
path, was  in  attendance,  was  urgent  that  his  own 
doctor,  who  had  attended  him  with  success  in  an  ill- 
ness partially  like  the  Minister's,  should  be  sum- 
moned. Instantly  the  stricken  man  thought,  not  of 
the  advantage  to  himself,  but  of  possible  uncomforta- 
ble complications  for  his  first  adviser  of  long  and  kind 
standing.  The  diplomacy  demanded  by  the  situation 
was  rendered  the  more  delicate  by  the  notorious  un- 
willingness of  allopaths  to  meet  the  dispensers  of  a 
differing  system.  Now,  however,  time  pressed;  a  life, 
precious  to  the  nation — the  nation  had  not  known 
how  precious  until  now — was  at  stake;  and  the  Sov- 
ereign herself,  whose  wish  was  still  a  command  to 
her  Favorite  Minister,  urged  the  instant  calling  in  of 
additional  advice.  So  Dr.  Quain  came;  and,  a  little 
later,  he  brought  Dr.  Bruce,  a  young  specialist  from 
the  Brompton  Hospital.  While  these  three  phy- 
sicians, and  especially  two  of  them,  continued 
through  nights  and  days  to  fight  death  inch  by  inch, 
Lord  Beaconsfield  cross-questioned  them,  speaking  of 
bis  case  as  if  it  were  that  of  a  stranger;  an  onlooker 
was  he  to  the  end. 

"I  will  not  go  down  to  posterity  as  one  who  used 
bad  grammar."  To  Lord  Barrington  the  words  were 
addressed  by  Lord  Beaconsfield  during  his  last  ill- 
ness, after  he  had  corrected  with  pains  a  proof  of  the 
speech  delivered  a  fortnight  earlier  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  The  proof  went  back  to  the  editor  with  this 
note: 

1-'  101 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"19  Cdrzon  Strekt,  W. 

"Lord  Barrington  presents  his  compliments  to  the 
editor  of  Hansard's  Debates  and  returns  the  proof- 
sheet  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  speech  on  the  address  of 
condolence  to  the  Queen,^  corrected  by  his  own  hand 
this  day. 

''March  31st,  1881" 

Among  the  "Letters"  printed  elsewhere  will  be 
found  one  addressed  to  Mr.  Hansard  by  Disraeli  twen- 
ty years  earlier,  showing  the  almost  excited  care  with 
which  he  entered  on  the  third  and  last  stage  of  a 
speech,  so  that  the  careful  preparation  and  delivery 
of  it  should  be  followed  by  an  equally  careful  report. 
As  for  the  grammar,  the  allusion  embodies  what  per- 
haps may  be  called  Disraeli's  one  large  illusion.  Alas! 
Disraeli's  books,  as  now  printed,  do  send  him  down 
to  posterity — a  long  one  may  it  be! — a  user  of  bad 
grammar.  He  was,  in  some  familiar  faults,  even  as  a 
Gibbon  gone  mad. 

It  may  be  said,  indeed,  that  Disraeli  did  very  lit- 
erally write  the  Queen's  English,  and  not  only  in  the 
Queen's  speeches.  Neither  Queen  Victoria  nor  her 
Minister  was  able  to  realize  the  superfluity  of  the 
"and"  before  a  relative  which  is  not  a  reiterated  one. 
"We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  ministerial  crisis  and  which 
I  am  afraid  will  be  followed  by  others,"  wrote  Queen 
Victoria.  And  Disraeli:  "His  presence  was  a  relief 
to  an  anxious  family  and  who  were  beginning  to  get 
alarmed."  Again:  "He  had  become  possessed  of  a 
vast  principality  and  which  was  not  an  hour's  drive 

'  On  the  assassination  of  the  Tsar  of  Russia. 

162 


THE    LAST    ILLNESS 

from  Whitcchapel."  Nor  was  the  grammar.  Those 
sentences,  taken  at  random  from  Kndymwn,  may 
perhaps  suggest  yet  another  addition  to  the  many 
ridiculous  explanations  of  the  bond  of  sympathy  be- 
tween her  Majesty  and  Lord  Beaconsfield.  It  may 
be  traced  to  a  superfluous  conjunction.^ 

On  being  told  that  Lord  Kowton  was  speeding 
from  Algiers,  and  would  be  with  him  on  a  certain  day: 
''Oh  no,''  Lord  Beaconsfield  said,  "he  can  not  be  here 
so  soon.  Nobody  comes  straight  from  Algiers.  He 
must  stop  three  days  on  the  journey  to  acclimatize." 
This  he  said  of  the  man  who  had  been  more  to  him 

'  "  And  which,"  in  this  jumbled  sense,  is  rampant  in  Lothair.  "  The  last 
saloon  led  into  a  room  of  smaller  dimensions  opening  on  the  garden,  and 
which  Lothair  thought,"  etc.  "  Lothair  .  .  .  had  the  gratification,  for  the 
first  time,  of  seeing  his  own  service  of  gold  plate  laid  out  in  completeness, 
atid  which  had  been  for  some  time  exhibited."  "  On  the  lawn  was  a  tent  of 
many  colors,  designed  by  himself,  and  which  might  have  suited  some  splen- 
did field  of  chivalry."  "  '  I  know  no  higher  sentiment,'  said  Theodora,  in  a 
low  voice,  a)id  yet  ivhich  sounded  like  the  breathing  of  some  divine  shrine." 
"  A  procession  of  almost  unequal  {sic)  splendor  and  sanctity,  and  ivhich  was 
to  parade  the  whole  church."  "  In  the  next  room,  not  less  spacious,  but 
which  had  a  more  inhabited  look."  These  instances,  picked  almost  at  ran- 
dom, consort  with  shuffling,  down-at-heel  sentences  such  as  these  :  '*  '  All  I 
can  do  is,'  said  his  Eminence,  when  his  visitor  was  ushered  out,  and  slirug- 
ping  his  shoulders,"  etc.  Neither  his  Eminence  nor  the  visitor  shrugged 
grammatically,  but  we  are  to  suppose  that  the  shoulders  were  his  Eminence's. 
Furthermore,  Lothair  "  felt  how  inferior  was  this  existence  to  that  of  a  life 
in  a  truly  religious  family."  The  divine  Theodora,  too,  gives  a  twist  to  her 
utterances.  "  '  You  have  not  suffered,  I  hope  ?  '  said  Lothair.  '  Very  little, 
and  through  your  kindness,'  "  is  the  reply,  which  says,  but  does  not  mean, 
that  the  lady  had  suffered  through  the  kindness  of  her  adorer.  "  Instead  of 
being  a  parasite,"  our  author  says  in  another  place,  "  everybody  flattered 
him,"  which  is  not  at  all  what  he  meant  to  say.  "  As  she  spoke  she  moved, 
and,  without  formally  inviting  him,  he  found  himself  walking  by  her  side," 
is  another  jumble  of  verbs  and  pronouns.  "  Although  never  authoritative 
.  .  .  Lothair  could  not  but  feel  that  during  the  happy  period  he  had  passed 
in  her  society  not  only  his  taste  had  refined,"  etc.    It  is  not  Lothair,  however, 

1G3 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

than  a  brother;  and  the  saying  is  the  measure  of  his 
final  patience,  the  ruling  habit  strong  in  death.  Yet 
by  the  time  Lord  Rowton  did  in  all  haste  arrive,  the 
sufferer  had  begun  to  dread  the  excitement  of  an  in- 
terview so  long  postponed,  and  now  so  charged  with 
emotion.  Not  until  the  fourth  day  after  his  return, 
therefore,  did  it  take  place. 

**Let  him  come  to  me  gradually,"  the  dying  Chief 
said  to  Lord  Barrington,  when  made  aware  that  Lord 
Row^ton  was  in  waiting.  With  the  failure  of  his  nerve 
power — the  nerve  power  which  had  so  long  borne  the 
strain,  and  which  was  always  superior  to  his  mere 
muscular  strength — any  effort,  mental  or  physical, 
became  a  terrible  fatigue — even  the  effort  of  seeing 
his  friends.  Lord  Barrington,  therefore,  rarely  went 
to  him  where  he  lay  or  sat,  half-recumbent  on  an  in- 
valid lounge  in  one  of  the  rooms  which,  being  en  suite, 
permitted  him  change  of  air  when  he  was  wheeled 
from  one  to  another;  and  it  was  his  servant,  Baum, 
wiiom,  on  April  11th,  he  requested  to  read  the  report 

but  the  lady  who  was  "  not  autlioritative."  "  Neither  Monsignor  Capel  nor 
Father  Coleman  were  present,"  contains  an  error  besides  that  famous  one  of 
the  real  Capel  for  the  fictitious  Catesby.  The  sporting  grammarian  may  mak? 
a  record  bag  of  similar  and  fifty  other  species  of  errors  on  the  spacious  hunt- 
ing-grounds of  these  last  couple  of  romances,  which,  if  not  better,  are  not 
worse  than  their  predecessors— all,  by  literary  ill-luck,  written  at  top  speed 
and  too  liastily  revised.  The  friend — every  author  possesses  such  a  one 
friend,  and  nearly  every  other  author  used  him— to  whom  these  pages  might 
have  passed  for  revision  while  the  novelist  lived  might  surely,  one  thinks, 
render  that  humble  pedagogic  service  even  now,  and  so  fulfil  in  spirit  the  only 
prediction  of  Disraeli's  about  himself  that  time  has  been  able  to  falsify  :  "  I 
will  not  go  down  to  posterity  as  one  who  used  bad  grammar."  Meanwhile  a 
certai!!  ignominy — tlie  word  is  not  too  strong— attaches  to  what  is  illogical  or 
slip  shod  in  language;  even  while  readers  rejoice  that,  just  as  good  grammar 
does  not  redeem  a  bad  book,  bad  grammar  cannot  destroy  a  good  one. 

164 


THE   LAST    ILLNESS 

of  the  Pnrliameutary  debate  ou  the  clay  before.  Bauiu 
excused  biiiiiself,  aud  suggested  that  Lord  Kowtou 
should  undertake  the  task,  a  proposal  which  the  Chief 
instantly  accepted,  aud  which,  in  the  carrying  out  of 
it,  made  more  possible  that  saddest  of  reunions  tliat 
proclaims  the  imminence  of  final  farewell.  What  loss 
had  been  inflicted  by  the  secretar^-'s  absence  at  the 
outset  can  never  be  said;  but  the  deprivation,  from 
the  doctors'  standpoint,  was  hinted  at  in  an  article 
published  in  the  Lintcct  when  all  was  over.^ 

Lord  Beaconsfield:  "What  is  the  day  of  the 
month?'' 

Lord  Barrington:     "April  7th." 

Lord  Beaconsfield:  "I  think  it  is  time  you  should 
write  to  the  young  Duke  of  Portland  and  tell  him  I 
can  not  come  to  him  for  Easter  week," 

That  was  the  last  private  business  he  transacted; 
and  it  serves  to  show  that,  until  twelve  days  before 

'  Lord  Boaconsfiold,  for  his  lioalth's  sakf,  according  to  this  writer,  sliould 
have  srone  to  tlie  House  of  Lords  earlier  or  not  at  all.  "  Speaking  now  freely, 
we  believe  tlie  deceased  statesman  would  have  lived  longer  if  he  had  not  thus 
late  retired  to  a  scene  of  comparative  quiet,  upon  which  he  ought,  in  the  in- 
terests of  his  health,  to  have  entered  when  the  Queen  urged  him  to  do  so 
some  years  before.  As  it  was,  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  deprived  of  his  accus- 
tomed mental  stimulus  at  the  precise  moment  when  he  most  needed  it ;  and 
although  his  immediate  personal  feelings  were  those  of  relief,  the  physical 
ease  was  purchased  at  too  great  a  price.  From  the  outset  of  the  last  illness 
the  case  was.  in  our  judgment,  hopeless,  unless  the  higher  cerebral  centers 
of  the  nervous  system  came  to  the  relief  of  tlie  lower.  The  bronchitis  was 
not  a  '  complication,'  but  an  integral  part  of  the  gouty  affection.  It  was,  in 
the  history  of  the  noble  lord's  life,  one  of  the  earliest  indications  of  the  gouty 
diathesis,  the  next  in  order  of  time  being  slight  gastric  and  intestinal  irrita- 
tion. It  must  ever  be  a  source  of  regret  that  Lord  Kowton,  who  alone  had 
stood  in  close  personal  relations  with  the  deceased  gentleman  during  many 
recent  and  trying  years  of  his  life,  was  unavoidably  absent  during  the  first 

105 


BEXJAMIX    DISRAELI 

his  death,  he  had  not  despaired  of  an  early  recovery. 
It. was  as  he  would  have  wished  it  to  be:  Welbeck, 
with  all  its  associations  of  Lord  George  Bentinck  in 
life  and  death,  received  his  last  social  message.  More- 
over, that  failure  to  fulfil  the  Welbeck  engagement 
ended  his  record  with  the  dinner-party  at  which  he 
had  been  the  guest  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  at  Marl- 
borough House  on  Saturday,  March  19th.  He  was 
very  unwell  that  night  when  he  came  home;  and,  next 
day,  he  began  that  last  confinement  to  his  room  which, 
a  week  later,  was  diversified  by  a  meeting  of  some 
of  his  political  colleagues  to  discuss  the  speech  to  be 
delivered  by  Lord  Cairns  in  the  House  of  Lords  con- 
demning the  Transvaal  policy  of  the  Liberal  Govern- 
ment. 

"I  like  you  to  remain  with  me,''  Lord  Beaconsfield 
said  to  one  of  his  phjsicians  who  was  about  to  depart, 
but  made  haste  to  stay. 

"No,  no,"  the  patient  added  after  a  few  minutes  of 
self-reproach,  ^'I  must  not  be  selfish.  Others  need 
TOU — go!" 

and  only  hopeful  stage  of  liis  illness.  It  is  also,  we  think,  unfortunate  that 
Lord  Kowton  did  not  see  the  noble  lord  until  four  days  after  his  return, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  fact  as  to  Lord  Beaconsfield's  owu  wishes  in  the 
matter.  It  is  again,  we  think,  to  be  regretted  that  her  Majesty's  graciously 
expressed  desire  to  visit  the  noble  lord  was  not  carried  into  effect.  We  must 
be  excused  for  giving  expression  to  these  regrets— they  are  essential  to  the 
professional  view  Ave  take  of  the  illness.  In  the  end  death  occurred,  as  it 
must  have  been  expected  to  occur,  after  a  temporary  revival  of  the  failing 
powers  of  vitality  such  as  is  usnally  manifested  in  cases  of  the  class,  in  the 
closing  days  of  a  life  lived,  mainly,  l)y  mental  energy  or  mind-force."  Lord 
Beaconsfield  was  to  die  on  the  first  anniversary  of  the  day  on  which  be  left 
AVindsor  Castle  after  tendering  to  Queen  Victoria  his  resignation  as  her 
Prime  Minister. 

1G6 


THE   LAST    ILLNESS 

"Bauiii,  you  will  be  a  happy  iiiau:  you  will  remem- 
ber with  pleasure  how  much  you  have  done  for  me." 
This  Lord  Beaconstield  said  to  his  confidential  at- 
tendant, who  had  formerly  served  Lady  Beaconsfield, 
and  who  during  five  weeks  of  the  fatal  illness  scarce 
left  the  bedside  of  his  master.  The  care  his  servants 
took  of  him  became  almost  a  care  of  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  own  at  the  last.  "The  servants  ought  to  be 
rewarded,'"  he  said  to  Lord  Rowton;  "and  Baum  ought 
to  be  rewarded;  I  must  leave  it  to  you  and  Rose  to 
arrange." 

"Take  away  that  emblem  of  mortality,"  Lord 
Beaconsfield  said,  when  a  circular  air-cushion  was 
offered  to  him  by  the  physicians.  The  allusion  to  the 
symbolic  bladder  from  which,  at  Death's  dart,  the 
breath  passes,  indicated,  even  under  effort,  some  of 
the  old  habit  of  hyperbolic  expression.  To  the  pol- 
itics of  the  day  he  made  epigrammatic  allusions,  and 
the  daily  bulletins  published  in  the  papers,  before  all 
hope  was  abandoned,  had  his  onlooking  criticism. 
One  da}^  when  the  report  ran,  "Lord  Beaconsfield's 
strength  is  maintained,"  "I  presume,"  he  said,  "the 
physicians  are  conscious  of  that.  It  is  more  than 
I  am." 

Again,  when  the  slip  of  paper  testifying  that  he 
"had  taken  nourishment  well"  w^as  shown  him,  he 
demurred  about  the  "well."  In  the  same  spirit,  after 
listening  to  the  fair  words  of  one  of  the  physicians, 
whom  he  narrowly  watched,  he  said:  "His  words  are 
hopeful,  but  his  countenance  is  that  of  a  disappointed 
man." 

167 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"I  have  suffered  much.  Had  I  been  a  Nihilist,  I 
should  have  confessed  all."  What  exactly  was  the 
trend  of  thought  underlying  this  almost  last  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  sayings  has  been  sometimes  in  dispute. 
Various  versions  of  the  saying  went  abroad;  and 
various  interpretations,  born  of  personal  wishes  and 
sympathies,  were  hazarded.  That  he  desired  to  con- 
fess, even  as  Eossetti  did  when  he  came  to  die — a  kind 
of  spiritual  trace  of  Italian  sojournings  of  the  old 
Disraelis  under  the  shadow  of  Venetian  domes  dom- 
inating to  the  third  generation — and  that  he  led  the 
way  thus,  inviting  a  response  that  was  never  made 
by  the  shy  or  the  inept  about  him:  this  is  one  in- 
genious theory,  to  which  was  doubtless  due  the 
further  rumor  that  a  Jesuit  confessor,  close  at  hand 
in  Farm  Street  (Father  Clare  was  named),  had  been 
summoned  to  his  side.  Others,  not  less  of  fanatics, 
but  less  of  friends,  read  into  the  words,  or  into  vague 
versions  of  them,  the  vacuous  longing  of  a  man  who 
had  posed  all  his  life  to  pose  also  in  death;  to  do,  not 
the  natural  thing,  but  the  dramatic;  to  gratify  a 
scenic  passion  and  to  pass  away  with  a  last  appeal, 
not  to  God,  but  to  the  gods.  They  found  him  re- 
gretting that,  not  being  a  Nihilist,  he  would  lack  the 
luxury  of  a  last  confession. 

A  quieter  translation  of  the  speech  that  came  from 
that  sensitive  brain  in  the  last  stages  of  disarray,  ran 
rather  thus:  "Deathbed  avowals  and  moralizings  are 
a  legacy  counted  upon  by  the  English  public;  and 
from  me  a  section  of  that  public  expects  the  lip-serv- 
ice profession  of  faith  I  have  shrunk  from  making  in 

168 


OF  THr 

UNIVER 

OF 


c.  lllE    LAST    ILLNESS 


life^  and  can  not  now  brini^  myseli"  to  frame.  As  La- 
cordaire  said  be  died  'an  impenitent  Liberal/  so 
I  too  die  an  impenitent.  1  have  nothing  to  re- 
tract, but  if  I  had  been  a  Nihilist,  I  should  have 
confessed  all.'' 

A  more  natural  rendering  remains;  it  is  also,  alas! 
a  more  painful  one.  We  would  evade  it  with  others, 
if  we  might.  Yet  the  friend  to  whom  the  words  were 
addressed  faced  it  then  and  afterward.  There  had 
lately  been  much  talk  in  the  air  of  Nihilists — Lord 
Beaconsfield's  last  speech  was  on  the  Tsar's  assas- 
sination— and  tales  were  told  of  the  torture  inflict- 
ed on  them  by  the  Russian  Government  to  force 
them  to  confess.  The  agony  he  himself  endured 
was  such,  he  meant  to  say,  as  must  have  secured 
from  him,  had  he  been  a  Nihilist,  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  guilt. 

"Death  must  be  faced  boldly."  All  his  life  he  had, 
in  one  mood  and  another,  thought  and  written  of 
death. 

"When  we  are  young  we  think  not  only  ourselves, 
but  all  about  us,  are  immortal.  Until  the  arrow  has 
struck  a  victim  on  our  own  hearth,  death  is  merely 
an  unmeaning  word.  There  are  few,  even  among 
those  least  susceptible  of  thought  and  emotion,  in 
whose  hearts  and  minds  the  first  death  in  the  family 
does  not  act  as  a  powerful  revelation  of  the  mysteries 
of  life  and  of  their  own  being;  and  youth,  gay  and 
light-hearted  youth,  is  taught  for  the  first  time  to  re- 
gret and  to  fear." 

But  regrets  and  fears  may  fret  and  hamper  a  spirit 

169 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

that  needs  the  spur  to  present  duty;  and,  at  that  pass, 
he  declares:  "One  should  never  think  of  death,  one 
should  think  of  life — that  is  the  real  piety." 

Not  that  the  greatest  activity  will  always  be  an 
anodyne  for  the  heart's  outreaching.  So  it  happens 
that,  in  Lothair,  Disraeli  put  into  the  mouths  of  the 
mature  man  and  the  neophyte  alike  the  language  of 
the  seeker, 

"I  was  a  Parliamentary  Christian,"  says  the 
Cardinal,  "till  despondency  and  study,  and  ceaseless 
thought  and  prayer,  and  the  divine  will,  brought  me 
to  light  and  rest." 

And  young  Lothair:  "Life  would  be  perfect  if  it 
would  only  last. .  But  it  will  not  last;  and  what  then? 
He  could  not  reconcile  interest  in  this  life  with  the 
conviction  of  another  and  an  eternal  one.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  men  could  have  only  one  thought  and  one 
occupation — the  future,  and  preparation  for  it.  What 
they  called  reality  appeared  to  him  more  vain  and 
nebulous  than  the  scenes  and  sights  of  sleep.  And 
he  had  had  that  conviction.  Had  he  it  now?  Yes, 
he  had  it  now,  but  modified,  perhaps.  He  was  not 
so  confident  as  he  was  a  few  months  ago  that  he  could 
be  ushered  by  a  Jesuit  from  his  deathbed  to  the  so- 
ciety of  St.  Michael  and  all  angels.  There  might 
be  long  processes  of  initiation,  intermediate  states 
of  higher  probation  and  refinement.  .  .  .  When 
millions  of  years  appeared  to  be  necessary  to  ma- 
ture the  crust  of  a  rather  insignificant  planet,  it 
might  be  presumption  in  man  to  assume  that  his 
soul,     though     immortal,    was    to     reach     its     final 

170 


Pliotograph   hij  II.   IT.   Tmnd  A-   Co.,  ().r[r,ril. 

riii:   i:ai;i.   of   hka('()Xsiii:i.1),   k.(;. 

From   a   iiln)t<)<iraijli    taken   in   the   'seventies. 


THE   LAST    ILLNESS 

dcstinaliou  regardless  of  all  the  iuHiienee  of  time  and 
space." 

Purgatorial,  truly,  are  the  tires  by  which  man's 
faith  and  patience  are  tried  all  his  life  through.  And 
at  the  end  of  all  searchings,  it  is — faith  and  patience 
still.  So  he,  too,  said:  "The  great  secret — we  can 
not  penetrate  that  with  all  our  philosophy.  Truth 
is  veiled;  but,  like  the  Shekinah  over  the  tabernacle, 
the  veil  is  of  dazzling  light." 

"I  had  rather  live,  but  I  am  not  afraid  to  die."  This 
was  the  only  profession  of  faith  uttered  by  the  dying 
statesman — a  Parliamentary  leader  in  the  last  act  of 
death.  The  drowsiness  of  the  last  hours  gradually 
became  a  stupor;  and  at  about  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  of  Tuesday,  April  19th,  Lord  Rowton,  Lord 
Barrington,  the  three  physicians,  the  nurses  and 
body-servants  were  gathered  round  the  great  gladi- 
ator of  so  many  a  mortal  combat.  Lord  Kowton  and 
Lord  Barrington  clasped  the  right  hand,  while  Dr. 
Kidd  held  the  left,  noting,  by  the  action  of  the  pulse, 
the  reluctant  ebb  of  life.  Then,  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
before  his  heart  ceased  to  beat,  a  strangely  affecting 
movement  of  the  dying  man  was  observed  by  those 
two  devoted  political  friends— the  most  devoted  man 
ever  had.  The  Minister,  his  ministering  over,  half- 
raised  himself  from  his  recumbent  posture,  and 
stretched  himself  out,  as  his  wont  was  when  rising 
to  reply  in  debate.  Then  his  lips  moved;  but  no  words 
came  to  the  acutely  listening  ears  about  him.  Only 
Death  heard;  that  adversary  the  first  he  had  ever 
failed   to   defeat.     Now   at   last   even   he  must   pay 

.       171 


BEXJAMIX    DISRAELI 

forfeit  for  Adam's  fault.  He  heard  perhaps  the 
division  bell  as  he  sank  back  supine:  and  knew  it  for 
a  knell.  "O  eloquent,  just,  and  might}'  Death,"  the 
words  of  Walter  Raleigh  surge  back  to  mind,  "whom 
none  could  advise  thou  hast  persuaded." 


? 


172 


BOOK    II 

HIS   LETTERS,   BOOKS,   AND   PUBLIC 

LIFE 


BOOK    II 

HIS    LETTERS,    BOOKS,   AND   PUBLIC 

LIFE 

"I  THINK  the  situation  will  suit."     So  wrote  Dis- 
raeli to  Mrs.  Austen  in  the  July  of  182G,  in  acceptance 
of  her  invitation  to  him  to   be  her  and 

Early  Travels.  ,  ,        ,  t,  .  . 

her   husbands   companion   m    a   tour   in 
Switzerland  and  Italy. 

His  first  foreign  travel  had  been  in  Germany, 
where  he  made  a  short  stay  in  the  companionship — 
renewed  in  later  and  longer  travels — of  Mr.  William 
Meredith.  This  second  change  was  necessitated  by 
the  nervous  breakdown  that  followed  the  production 
of  the  first  three  volumes  of  Vivian  Grey  and  his  abor- 
tive connection  with  the  Star  Chamber.  His  first  sight 
of  the  South  must  have  been  further  enlivened  and 
endeared  to  him  by  the  presence  of  these  two  particu- 
larly kind  friends,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Benjamin  Austen, 
who  w^ere  neighbors  of  the  Disraelis  in  Bloomsbury 
and  the  most  serviceable  observers  of  Benjamin's 
early  years.  The  travelers  left  England  on  August 
4,  182G.  A  most  interesting  article  w^ent  to  the 
Quarter} !i  Review  sixty-one  years  later  from  a  writer 
who  had  before  him  the  diary  kept  by  iNIrs.  Austen 
on  the  journey.    This  lady,  the  daughter  of  a  gentle- 

175 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

man  named  I^ckett,  residing  at  Oundle,  in  Northamp- 
tonshire, became,  in  her  youth  and  remarkable 
beauty,  the  wife  of  Benjamin  Austen,  a  London  so- 
licitor in  large  practise.  She  was  a  woman  of  many 
accomplishments,  and  of  a  few  more  years  than  his 
own;  and  Disraeli,  who  loved  youth  in  men  but  was 
greatly  drawn  to  maturity  in  women,  at  once  formed 
with  her  a  friendship  which  conferred  on  him  instant 
favors — this  journe}'  to  Italy,  for  example — and  upon 
her  a  lasting  commemoration.  Perhaps  he  counted 
upon  his  future  to  make  the  recompense  that  he  then 
had  no  means  to  make,  and  that  it  has  made  abun- 
danth\  We  seem  to  have  a  hint  of  the  kind  in  a  light 
Avord  of  advice  to  her  to  keep  his  letters;  which  would 
be  of  value  yet,  he  explained,  if  he  became  as  famous 
as  he  intended.  Five  days  were  passed  in  Paris  and, 
after  posting  through  France,  the  party  arrived  at 
Geneva,  Disraeli  keenly  alert  to  all  things,  including 
French  cookery  and  the  Burgundy  in  which  he  took 
as  much  delight  as  a  hero  of  George  Meredith's  might, 
attributing  to  it  the  inspirations  of  generous  talk. 
Byron's  boatman  was  a  feature  of  Geneva,  and  Dis- 
raeli lay  back  in  a  boat  on  the  Lake  taking  in  impres- 
sions, afterward  reproduced  in  Yeuetia,  of  storm- 
clouds — among  men  and  in  the  heavens.  From  that 
very  boat  had  Byron  himself  witnessed  the  thunder 
and  lightning;  they  seemed  to  Disraeli  to  be  seeing  it 
together;  and  that  was  a  link  which  must  last  in  his 
case,  he  having  a  most  faithful  nature.  Probably  he 
never  became  aware  of  the  verse  that  Aubrey  de  Vere, 
then  in  an  Irish  nursery,  wrote  amid  the  same  scenes 

17G 


EARLY   TRAVELS 

years  later,  but  it  must  have  come  very  near  to  ex- 
pressing bis  own  mood : 

For  we  the  mighty  mountain-tops  have  trod 
Both  in  the  glow  of  sunset  and  sunrise, 
And  lightened  by  the  moon  of  southern  skies. 
The  snow-white  torrent  of  the  thundering  flood 
We  two  have  watched  together.     In  the  wood 
We  two  have  felt  the  warm  tears  dim  our  eyes 
While  zephyrs  softer  than  an  infant's  sighs 
Ruffled  the  light  air  of  our  solitude 

O  Earth,  matern3,l  Earth,  and  thou,  O  Heaven, 

And  Night,  first-born,  who  now,  even  now,  dost  waken 

The  host  of  stars,  thy  constellated  train  ! 

Tell  me  if  those  can  ever  be  forgiven, 

Those  abject,  who  together  have  partaken 

These  Sacraments  of  Nature  and  in  vain  I 

Disraeli's  commune  witb  Byron,  later  to  take  literary 
form,  bad  its  instant  effect  on  bis  babits,  even  upon 
bis  costume.  He  ordered  Eastern  dress,  and  he 
sighed  for  Eastern  travel.  It  was  to  come  in  due 
course.  For  the  present,  however,  he  must  be  con- 
tent to  cross  the  Simplon  into  Italy.  The  party 
paused  at  Milan,  still  fragrant  with  memories  of  its 
great  Archbishop,  St.  Charles  Borromeo,  whose  name 
and  fame  were  to  be  made  familiar  in  England  by 
Disraeli's  future  friend,  and  the  prototype  of  two  of 
his  "characters'' — Cardinal  Manning.  Picture  gal- 
leries were  seen  with  a  rather  conventional  eye,  and 
then  Venice  was  entered.  All  these  cities  seem  to 
have  especial  relation  to  Disraeli  the  cosmopolitan. 
They  bad  harbored  Disraelis  in  the  past,  or  they  were 

to  become  the  scenes  of  episodes  in  his  own  life  or  in 
lu  177 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

his  novels,  or  they  were  to  be  affected  by  his  states- 
mancraft.  Some  one  of  the  many  men  who  composed 
that  one  man,  citizen  of  the  world  as  he  was,  had  a 
destined  home  in  each  place  that  was  visited.  The 
Past,  the  Present,  or  the  Future,  called  to  him  from 
the  very  stones,  and  in  Venice  most  of  all.  There  had 
his  race  found  a  home,  in  that  republic  of  liberty, 
where  Catholic  zealots  practised  charity  to  those  who 
were  not  of  their  number — "Other  sheep  I  have, 
which  are  not  of  this  fold."  He  went  into  the  ghetto, 
where  his  fathers  had  foregathered,  wearing  on  their 
gaberdines  the  yellow  O — of  which  he  was  incon- 
gruously reminded  in  later  years  by  the  bookplate  of 
Lord  Ormonde,  with  its  capital  letter  printed  in 
orange — and  there  he  still  found  children  of  his  race, 
with  whom  he  talked — daughters  of  Israel  to  whom 
he  brought  morning  offerings  of  fruit  and  flowers. 
The  quays  of  Venice,  the  most  cosmopolitan  in  the 
world  in  their  traditions,  signaled  to  him. 

All  her  waters  quiver 
With  his  fair  image  facing  him  for  ever. 

Like  his  own — very  much  his  own — Contarini  Flem- 
ing, he  saw  his  Southern  face  constantly  repeated  in 
the  faces  about  him.  "My  Venetian  countenance," 
says  Contarini  Fleming  of  his  own,  contrasting  it  with 
the  Northern  visages  of  his  two  brothers.  He  meets 
a  procession  from  St.  Mark's;  they  come  swinging 
their  censers  and  singing;  and  "You  have  been  long 
expected"  is  the  burden  of  their  song.  Of  the  resem- 
blance between  Disraeli  and  many  a  Venetian  there 

178 


EARLY   TRAVELS 

could  be  uo  doubt;  his  dress  itself,  even  in  the  later 
days,  had  no  English  look  about  it;  and  flitting  vis- 
itors to  Brighton,  fancying  a  facial  resemblance,  gave 
the  name  of  Disraeli  to  the  North  Italian  seller 
of  brandy-snaps  upon  the  Brighton  beach  in  the  early 
'seventies.  In  1900,  after  Disraeli  had  gone  to  his 
fathers,  and  when  a  new  generation  faced  a  new  cen- 
tury, I  found  myself  confronted  in  St.  Mark's  with 
Disraeli's  double — in  face,  in  figure,  I  imagined  in 
temperament.  He  was  a  canon  of  St.  Mark's,  and,  in 
his  stall,  even  while  the  Mass  proceeded,  he  appeared 
to  be  an  onlooker.  In  the  Piazza  at  night  he  passed 
through  the  gaily  decorous  throng  unseeing:  neither 
the  world  nor  the  Church  gave  its  stamp  to  a  counte- 
nance which  yet,  like  Disraeli's  own,  seemed  made  for 
mobility. 

Disraeli's  own  first  impressions  of  St.  Mark's,  its 
Square,  and  "the  tall  campanile  red  in  the  sun,"  now 
seen  no  more,  the  flagstaffs  and  the  populace,  are  pre- 
served for  us  in  Contarini  Fleming.  "I  hastened,"  Con- 
tarini  records,  "to  the  Place  of  St.  Mark.  It  was 
crowded  and  illuminated.  Three  gorgeous  flags 
waved  on  the  mighty  staffs,  which  once  bore  the 
standards  of  Candia  and  Cyprus  and  the  Morea.  The 
cofl"ee-houses  were  full,  and  gay  parties,  seated  on 
chairs  in  the  open  air,  listened  to  the  music  of  mil- 
itary bands,  while  they  refreshed  themselves  with 
confectionery  so  rich  and  fanciful  that  it  excites  the 
admiration  of  all  travelers" — confectionery  which 
Disraeli  and  Contarini  Fleming  in  common  afterward 
discovered  in  Turkey  to  be  Oriental:  confectionery, 

179 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

alas!  long  since  ousted  from  beneath  those  otherwise 
still  happy  colonnades.  "The  variety  of  costumes," 
continues  this  double  narrative,  written  in  days  when 
costume  was  still  worn  by  the  lower  and  some  of  the 
middle  classes  in  Venice,  "was  also  great.  ...  A 
few  days  before  my  arrival,  the  Austrian  squadron 
had  carried  into  Venice  a  Turkish  ship  and  two  Greek 
vessels  which  had  violated  the  neutrality.  Their 
crews  now  mingled  with  the  crowd.  I  beheld  for  the 
first  time  the  haughty  and  turbaned  Ottoman,  sitting 
cross-legged  on  a  carpet  under  a  colonnade,  sipping 
his  coffee,  and  smoking  a  long  chibouk,  and  the 
Greeks  with  their  small  red  caps,  their  high  foreheads 
and  arched  eyebrows."  The  day  happened  to  be  a  fes- 
tival of  the  Church:  hence  the  especial  gaiety  of  the 
scene — a  scene  "pervaded  with  an  air  of  romance  and 
refinement  compared  with  which  the  glittering  dissi- 
pation of  Paris,  even  in  its  liveliest  and  most  graceful 
hours,  assumes  a  character  alike  coarse  and  common- 
place." 

From  Venice,  Disraeli  proceeded  to  Florence  in 
the  traveling-carriage  of  the  Austens,  making,  by  the 
way,  in  true  Byronian  discipleship,  a  pilgrimage  to 
the  tomb  of  Petrarch  at  Arqua  and  to  the  prison  of 
Tasso  at  Ferrara.  In  Florence  itself,  Contarini  Flem- 
ing, we  may  remember,  formed  the  opinion  that  he 
scarcely  knew  another  place  "he  would  prefer  as  a 
residence."  (This,  long  before  the  days  of  Landor  and 
the  Brownings.)  "The  character  of  Art,  both  from 
ancient  associations  and  its  present  possessions,  is 
forcibly  impressed  upon  this  city.    It  is  full  of  iuven- 

180 


EARLY    TRAVELS 

tioii.  You  can  not  stroll  fifty  yards,  you  can  not  enter 
a  church  or  palace,  without  being  favorably  reminded 
of  the  power  of  human  thought.  It  is  a  famous  me- 
morial of  the  genius  of  the  Italian  middle  ages,  when 
the  mind  of  man  was  in  one  of  its  springtides,  and 
when  w^e  mark  so  frequently  what  at  the  present  day 
we  too  much  underrate,  the  influence  of  individual 
character.  In  Florence  the  monuments  are  not  only 
of  great  men,  but  of  the  greatest.  You  do  not  gaze 
upon  the  tomb  of  an  author  who  is  merely  a  great 
master  of  composition,  but  of  one  who  formed  the 
language.  The  illustrious  astronomer  is  not  the  dis- 
coverer of  a  planet,  but  the  revealer  of  the  whole 
celestial  machinery." 

The  return  journey  was  made  by  Genoa,  Turin,  the 
Mont  Cenis,  and  Paris  again,  London  being  reached 
at  the  end  of  October.  Those  three  months  of  the 
year  1826  were  ever  memorable  to  Disraeli,  who  could 
not  rest  until  he  was  again  en  voyage  in  1830 — this 
time  on  that  journey  to  Spain,  Greece,  and  the  East 
of  which  his  Home  Letters  tell  the  stirring  tale. 
The  Alhambra  might  put  into  the  background  of  his 
memory  the  Ducal  Palace  as  "a  barbarous  though 
picturesque  building";  and  the  paintings  of  INlurillo — 
grandiose  yet  also  peasant-loving  like  himself — might 
all  but  banish  the  memory  of  the  Fra  Bartolommeos 
he  had  particularly  admired  in  Florence.  Nothing 
in  his  first  journey  was  so  adventurous  as  the  visit 
he  paid,  during  his  second,  to  Corfu,  in  order  to  vol- 
unteer into  the  Turkish  army  under  the  Grand  Vizier, 
Reschid  Pasha,  then  suppressing  an  insurrection  of 

181 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

the  Albanians — Disraeli  himself,  by  the  way,  wore  an 
Albanian  costume  on  the  ^usan,  his  friend  Clay's 
yacht.  Nothing  that  he  had  before  experienced  was 
quite  so  weird  as  his  visit  to  Kalio  Bey  at  Arta,  the 
only  occasion  (and  we  have  his  own  frank  record  of 
it)  of  his  becoming  drunk  with  wine;  nothing  so  daz- 
zlingly  ambitious  as  that  dream  at  Athens  which  took 
shape  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Austen:  "Had  I  £25,000  to 
throw  away,  I  might,  I  really  believe,  increase  my 
headaches  by  wearing  a  crown."  But  impressions  of 
first  travel,  like  impressions  of  first  love,  are  inefface- 
able. Greater  wonders  may  be  in  store;  but  they  are 
subservient  in  a  measure  to  the  magic  of  the  earlier 
experience.  What  Disraeli  owed  to  this  dear  friend, 
Mrs,  Austen,  he  never  ceased  to  remember;  and  long 
afterward  he  praised  the  Fates  that  allowed  him  to 
confer  on  his  old  friend's  nephew.  Sir  Austen  Layard 
— though  Layard  was  no  formal  follower  of  his  in 
politics — the  honors  and  riches  of  high  ambassadorial 
rank. 

To  Mrs.  Benjamin  Austen. 

"  Bradenham, 
"  3Iarc7i7th,  1830. 

"I  am  desirous  of  quitting  England  that  I  may 
lead  even  a  more  recluse  life  than  I  do  at  present,  and 
111  H  ith  release  myself  from  perpetual  commisera- 
tion. When  I  was  in  town  last  I  consulted 
many  eminent  men.  I  received  from  them  no  consola- 
tion. I  grieve  to  say  my  hair  grows  very  badly;  and, 
I  think,  more  gray,  which,  I  can  unfeignedly  declare, 
occasions  me  more  anguish  than  even  the  prospect 
of  death." 

182 


V 


A  FRIEND   IN   NT:ED 

A  stay  at  Lyme  Kegis  in  the  November  of  1829 
had  left  Disraeli  still  "desperately  ill";  and  the  life 
to  which,  one  supposes  from  the  concluding  passage 
of  this  letter  to  Mrs.  Austen,  he  was  but  lightly  at- 
tached was  even  given  up  for  lost.  He  complained  of  a 
"stupor"  which  made  literary  composition  impossi- 
ble; it  did  more  at  times;  for  he  speaks  of  sleeping 
sixteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four,  and  of  passing 
"a  week  nearly  in  a  trance  from  digitalis,"  and  had 
giddiness  in  the  head  and  palpitation  of  the  heart — 
a  formula  from  which  we  may  gather  that  he  suffered 
extreme  feebleness  and  inertia  from  digitalis  poison- 
ing— though  digitalis,  as  we  now  know,  strengthens, 
not  weakens,  the  heart.  "Your  deceased  though  sin- 
cere friend"  was  the  signature  to  this  letter. 

To  Benjamin  Austen  he  wrote:  "Let  me  express 
my  grateful  sense  of  your  unparalleled  kindness,  and 
A  Friend  in  pardon  me  if  I  add  that  I  think  better  of 
myself  for  having  excited  so  warm  a 
friendship  in  the  heart  of  an  honorable  and  excellent 
man." 

That  was  Disraeli's  thanksgiving  to  the  husband 
of  Mrs.  Austen  for  the  gift,  coming  through  his  hand, 
which  enabled  Disraeli  to  start  on  his  Eastern  tour 
in  the  June  of  1830. 

This  l-ddj  outlived  her  younger  friend,  dying 
in  1887  at  the  age  of  ninety-two. 

"My  letters  are  shorter  than  Napoleon's,  but  I  love 
you  better  than  he  did  Josephine,"  wrote  Disraeli  to 

183 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

his  sister,  August  4,  1833.  I  have  heard  it  alleged 
against  Disraeli,  as  his  one  marked  deficiency,  that 
Sarah  ^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^^  women.     Certainly  he  did 

Disraeli.  not  love  them  promiscuously;  and  "love," 

in  inverted  commas,  the  fancy  of  passion  that 
passes  with  passion,  he  distrusted  utterly.  Hence  we 
have  him  as  very  much  of  an  onlooker  even  among 
women.  Love  of  sister  was  the  serenely  ruling  feel- 
ing of  his  early  life;  love  of  wife  of  his  later;  and  if 
there  are  few  series  of  letters  so  wittily  informatory 
of  current  events  in  the  London  of  the  'thirties  as 
those  which  Disraeli  devotedly  sent  to  his  sister, 
"Dearest  Sa,"  so  also  nothing  is  much  more  touching 
than  his  recurrence  in  the  last  script  of  his  old  age 
to  the  scenes  and  incidents  of  his  and  her  childhood 
at  Bradenham.  "A  thousand  loves"  he  sends  to  her 
in  youth;  and,  half  a  century  later,  in  Myra  Ferrars 
she  blooms  again.  If  women  do  not  see  how  interest- 
ing he  made  them  in  his  books — what  allies  as  well 
as  what  lovers;  if  they  do  not  imagine  themselves 
represented  in  the  persons  of  his  wife  and  sister,  who 
stood  to  him  for  the  sex;  if  they  do  not  enjoy  and 
share  those  honors  and  accept  the  constancy  of  a  su- 
preme man  to  one  woman  as  the  best  homage  he  can 
render  to  all  Womanhood; — they  must  be  held  most 
justly,  even  when  most  profusely,  reproached  for  the 
insensibility  of  their  sex,  in  Elizabethan  love-songs. 
That  Disraeli  knew  love  as  a  consuming  passion,  can 
any  one  who  has  read  Henrietta  Temple,  or  read  men, 
doubt?  That  the  man  of  affairs  in  him — of  affairs 
in  the  large,  not  the  light  sense — fought  against  love 

184 


SARAH   DISRAELI 

as  a  mere  passion  for  himself  is  his  own  avowal.  He 
kept  his  wings  unsinged;  and  there  is  not  a  breath 
against  him  as  a  light  lover.  His  sonnet  to  Lady 
Mahon,  though  her  husband  did  not  welcome  it,  would 
not  now  be  held  to  be  even  an  indiscretion;  and  any 
allusions  we  have  of  his  to  the  charms  of  ladies  he  met 
upon  his  travels — Mrs.  Considine  and  the  Misses 
Brackenbury — are  enough  to  show  him  impression- 
able but  also  self-repressing.  Once  he  speaks  to  his 
sister  of  a  woman  who  has,  alas!  the  power  to  make 
him  melancholy;  and  once  again,  in  tender  days,  he 
asks  her  how  she  would  like  as  a  sister-in-law  Lady 

,  with  a  well-filled  purse.    It  was  a  hint  of  proud 

possibilities:  no  more.  His  intimates  say  that  he 
never  had  a  refusal;  and  under  cover  of  that  state- 
ment may  be  forgotten  the  gossip  in  the  years  of  his 
widowerhood  which  thus  associated  his  name  with 
that  of  the  widowed  Lady  Chesterfield. 

Sarah  Disraeli  was  born  in  the  Adelphi  in  1802,  the 
eldest  child  of  her  parents.  A  charming  girl,  all 
records  of  her  pronounce  her  to  be;  and  early  in  her 
girlhood  she  began  that  unselfish  adoration  of  her 
brother,  two  years  her  junior,  which  suffered  no 
abatement  in  its  fervor  all  the  days  of  her  life.  A 
devoted  daughter,  she  leaves  the  impresssion  that 
even  her  father  was  dearer  to  her  because  he  was 
the  father  also  of  Ben.  Familiar  is  the  story  of  her 
service  to  that  father  when,  in  1840,  his  sight  serious- 
ly failed  him.  "Amid  this  partial  darkness,  I  am  not 
left  without  a  distant  hope  and  a  present  consolation; 
and  to  HER  who  has  so  often  lent  me  the  light  of  her 

185 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

eyes,  the  intelligence  of  her  voice,  and  the  careful 
work  of  her  hand,  the  author  must  ever  owe  the  'debt 
immense'  of  paternal  gratitude."  A  year  later  he  said 
<Df  his  Amenities  of  Literature:  "The  author  is  denied 
the  satisfaction  of  reading  a  single  line  of  it.  It  has 
been  confided  to  one  whose  eyes  unceasingly  peruse 
the  volume  for  him  who  can  never  read,  and  whose 
eager  hand  traces  the  thought  ere  it  vanish  in 
the  thinking."  One  imagines  the  reluctance  of  the 
modest  amanuensis  at  this,  almost  her  rebellion. 
One  feels  the  emotion  of  both  father  and  daughter 
when  such  passages  were  dictated,  and  the  glorified 
type  of  the  her  and  the  one  was  insisted  upon.  Even- 
handed  are  the  Fates;  and  Milton,  whose  genius  Isaac 
Disraeli  envied,  might  have  envied  Isaac  Disraeli  his 
daughter. 

In  her  earlier  twenties.  Miss  Sarah  Disraeli  be- 
came affianced  to  Mr.  William  Meredith,  a  young  man 
of  good  parts  and  of  great  expectations.  Her  father 
and  brother  first  met  him  at  rather  famous  dinners 
given  in  London  by  his  uncle.  This  was  Mr.  William 
Meredith,  senior,  a  retired  contractor  of  large  for- 
tune, a  bachelor,  who  spent  thousands  of  pounds  upon 
the  endowment  of  Mr,  Thomas  Taylor,  the  Platouist, 
and  his  translation  of  Aristotle.  The  elder  Meredith 
died  in  1831,  bequeathing  his  substance  to  his  nephew, 
who,  as  chance  had  it,  was  at  that  very  moment  dying 
of  fever  while  absent  with  Benjamin  Disraeli  in  the 
East.  A  note  supplied  to  the  Home  Letters  by  Mr. 
Ralph  Disraeli  says: 

"The  untimely  death  of  his  friend  Meredith,  bring- 

186 


BULAVER-LYTTON    AS   BEST   FRIEND 

ing  bitter  grief  to  others  than  the  travelers,  occurred 
at  Cairo.  This  sad  event  delayed  my  brother's  de- 
parture for  England." 

The  Disraelis  did  not  parade  their  griefs  in  public, 
or  it  might  have  been  added  that  Benjamin  Disraeli 
for  years  went  unreconciled  to  that  loss;  and  that  it 
affected  his  spirit  till  the  end  of  his  days.  That 
sister,  who  thenceforth  went  widowed  to  the  end  of 
her  earthly  days,  died  in  December,  1859,  at  the  age 
of  fifty-seven,  in  one  of  the  Ailsa  Park  Villas  at  Twick- 
enham, where,  tending  the  flowers  of  her  small  gar- 
den, and  devoting  her  spare  means  to  the  service  of 
the  poor,  she  lived  a  nun-like  life,  enlivened  by  the 
visits  of  her  brother.  Him  she  lived  to  see  the  Leader 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  the  debater  who  did  indeed 
"floor  them  all.''  She  lies  in  the  cemetery  at  Willes- 
den,  and  over  her  ashes  stands  a  Maltese  cross,  which 
bears  the  letters  "I.H.S.,"  and  the  words  "Thy  will  be 
done."  Another  and  a  later  inscription  is  hers;  that, 
oftener  seen,  which  fitly  occupies  the  dedication  page 
of  the  Home  Letters:  "To  the  memory  of  the  Dear 
Sister  to  whom  so  many  of  these  letters  were  ad- 
dressed." 

"Your  father's  conversation  always  conveyed  to 
me  new  and  productive  ideas,  and  I  reckon  him 
Buiwer-  among  the  two  or  three   persons  whose 

Lytton  as         mlnds  influenced  the  development  of  my 

Best  Friend. 

own,"  wrote  Disraeli  to  Robert,  Earl  of 
Lytton.  A  grain  of  salt  must  commonly  be  swallowed 
with  what  is  said  about  sons  to  fathers,  and  particu- 

187 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

larly  about  fathers  to  sons.  All  the  same,  this  friend- 
ship with  Bulwer  was  one  of  Disraeli's  early  bits  of 
good  luck.  He  owed  its  beginning  to  his  father;  and 
it  was  perhaps  partly  in  his  mind  when  he  spoke 
somewhere  of  the  advantages  it  is  to  a  man  to  have 
a  distinguished  father.  Perhaps,  also,  when  he  wrote 
a  much  misquoted  passage  about  the  doom  of  friends 
who  married  for  "love" — love  in  quotation  marks — he 
had  an  eye  on  Bulwer,  whose  marriage  with  Miss 
Rosina  Wheeler  realized  Bulwer's  mother's  fearful 
incredulity  as  to  the  possibility  of  a  perennial  infatu- 
ation. Invitations  from  the  newly  married  pair  at  36 
Hertford  Street  came  to  Disraeli  on  his  first  setting 
up  as  a  man  about  town  in  1832.  In  February,  that 
year,  as  something  of  a  debutant,  he  described  "a  very 
brilliant  reunion,''^  at  which  he  talked  to  Lord  Mul- 
grave,  saw  Lord  Strangford,  the  father  of  his  future 
friend,  George  Smythe;  admired  Count  D'Orsay, 
whom  he  had  then  to  label  for  Bradenham  "the 
famous  Parisian  dandy,"  but  whom  he  was  soon  to 
share  with  Lady  Blessington  and  others  as  "our  dear- 
est." Albany  Fonblanque,  Charles  Villiers,  IMrs. 
Gore,  and  L.  E.  L.  were  also  there.  A  little  later,  at 
a  dinner,  he  found  Bulwer  "more  sumptuous  and  fan- 
tastic than  ever";  and  we  hear  more  of  the  hostess: 
"Mrs.  B.  was  a  blaze  of  jewels  and  looked  like  Juno; 
only,  instead  of  a  peacock,  she  had  a  dog  in  her  lap, 
called  Fairy,  and  not  bigger  than  a  bird-of-paradise, 
and  quite  as  brilliant."  That  was  Disraeli's  first  time 
of  kissing,  too,  with  the  open-brimmed  champagne- 
glass:  a  saucer  mounted  on  a  pedestal,  he  says  of  it. 

188 


BULVVER-LYTTON    AS   BEST  FRIEND 

At  another  "really  brillant  soiree^'  there,  that  same 
season,  he  was  introduced  to  his  future  fate,  Mrs. 
Wyndhani  Lewis;  and  there  Lady  Stepney  paid  him 
"ludicrous  compliments"  and  asked  him  what  he 
th()u«>ht  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci — ludicrous  again. 
Moore,  too,  was  there;  and  Lord  Mulgrave  once  more. 
The  season  over,  Bulwer  went  down  to  Bradenham 
with  Disraeli,  and  he  too  said  "there  was  no  place 
like  it,"  with  many  other  gratifying  things,  pleasing 
son  and  father  alike  by  saying  to  the  son:  "I  tell  you 
where  your  father  beats  us  all — in  style."  The  young 
men  are  next  heard  of  together  in  Bath — lions,  of 
course.  Invitations  fluttered  in;  they  "preferred  the 
relaxation  of  their  own  society."  When  they  went 
to  one  public  ball  they  were  "quite  mobbed": 'Disraeli 
knew  the  sensation  very  well  later  in  London  draw- 
ing-rooms; but  he  had  his  first  and  still  sweet  experi- 
ence in  England's,  not  London's,  West.  "I  like  Bath 
very  much,"  he  candidly  said. 

Back  in  London,  he  dines  with  Bulwer  "  'to  meet 
some  truffles' — very  agreeable  company."  Mrs. 
Wheeler,  Mrs.  Bulwer's  mother,  was  there,  "some- 
thing between  Jeremy  Bentham  and  Meg  Merrilies — 
very  clever,  but  awfully  revolutionary.  She  poured 
forth  all  her  Systems" — and  Sir  Austin  Feverel  not 
at  hand.  If  Robert,  the  future  Viceroy,  was  brought 
up  on  them,  they  did  not  tend  disastrously;  but  while 
the  lady  "advocated  the  rights  of  woman,  Bulwer 
abused  system-mongers  and  the  sex,"  while  Rosina 
did  decidedly  the  politic — usually  different  from  the 
political — thing:  "played  witli  her  dog."    In  1838  he 

189 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

stayed  with  Bulwer  at  the  Priory,  Acton;  and  in  the 
autumn  of  1850,  when  Bulwer  had  become  Lytton, 
and  Knebworth  had  been  entered  upon,  he  went  down 
to  the  author  of  The  Last  of  tJie  Barons  there. 

"He  is  a  real  Baron,"  Disraeli  then  wrote,  "though 
he  will,  I  think,  be  the  first,  not  the  last  of  his  race." 
In  the  sense  in  which  the  lesser  is  merged  in  the 
larger,  he  was  the  last  of  the  Barons  too;  for  Disraeli, 
continuing  the  friendship  of  one  generation  to  an- 
other, gave  the  son — his  father's  son — the  Viceroy- 
alty  that  earned  an  earldom.  Bulwer's  influence 
never  made  a  spiritualist  of  Disraeli.  Pressed  by  his 
friends  to  go  to  see  some  manifestations  of  animal 
magnetism,  Disraeli  conceded:  "Decidedly  I  will 
come,  if  you  are  serious  in  saying  that  a  man  walks  on 
the  ceiling." 

When  Disraeli  had  stood  three  or  four  years 
earlier  for  Marylebone,  some  one  was  supposed  to  ask 
him  "on  what,  in  offering  himself,  he  intended  to 
stand,"  and  he  was  reported  to  reply:  "On  my  head." 
He  liked  the  invention  well  enough;  and,  had  the 
pencil  of  caricaturist  been  busied  about  him  then,  we 
can  imagine  the  sort  of  topsy-turvy  figures  to  be  add- 
ed to  the  gallery  that  belongs  throughout  rather  to 
ribaldry  than  to  humor.  Bulwer  did  not  give  the 
guarantee;  and  Disraeli,  therefore,  never  went — 
where  Stanhope,  Strangford,  Maidstone,  and  others 
of  their  friends  flocked — to  M.  de  Dupotet's  in 
Orchard  Street. 

"All  London  is  mad  with  animal  magnetism," 
Dizzy  (keeping  his  head)  wrote  in  the  first  year  of 

190 


BULWER-LYTTON   AS   BEST  FRIEND 

the  Victorian  era — a  madness  wliicii,  under  changing 
ways  and  means — especially  means — of  evoking  it, 
endures  into  the  Edwardian.  Bulwer's  recurrence  to 
Rosicrucian  mysteries  is  indicated  in  his  Zanoni;  and 
the  following  reading  of  Disraeli,  arrived  at  by  a 
process  of  divination  known  as  geomancy,  was  found 
among  his  father's  papers  by  Robert  Lytton — happy 
alike  in  its  reading  of  character  and  its  forecast  of 
events.  The  signature  E.  L.  B.  seems  at  first  glance 
to  indicate  that  it  was  cast  before  Bulwer  changed 
his  name  to  Lytton  in  the  late  'thirties,  and  therefore, 
as  is  also  internally  implied,  before  Disraeli's  mar- 
riage in  1839.  But  the  careful  biographer  prints  the 
date  as  September  3,  1860. 

JUDEX. 

"A  singularly  fortunate  figure:  a  strongly  marked 
influence  toward  the  acquisition  of  coveted  objects. 

"He  would  gain  largely  by  marriage  in  the  pecuni- 
ary sense,  which  makes  a  crisis  in  his  life. 

"He  would  have  a  peaceful  hearth,  to  his  own 
taste,  and  leaving  him  free  for  ambitious  objects. 

"In  honors  he  has  not  only  luck,  but  a  felicity  far 
beyond  the  most  favorable  prospects  that  could  be 
reasonably  anticipated  from  his  past  career,  his  re- 
cent position,  or  his  personal  endowments. 

"He  will  leave  a  higher  name  than  I  should  say 
his  intellect  quite  warrants,  or  than  would  now  be 
conjectured. 

"He     will     certainly     have     very     high     honors. 

191 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Whether  official  or  in  rank,  high  as  compared  with 
his  birth  or  actual  achievements. 

"He  has  a  temperament  that  finds  pleasure  in 
what  belongs  to  social  life.  He  has  not  the  reserve 
common  to  literary  men. 

"He  has  considerable  veneration,  and  will  keep 
well  with  Church  and  State;  not  merely  from  policy, 
but  from  sentiment  and  instinct. 

"His  illnesses  will  be  few  and  quick;  but  his  last 
illness  may  be  lingering. 

"He  is  likely  to  live  to  old  age, — the  close  of  his 
career  much  honored. 

"He  will  be  to  the  last  largely  before  the  public: 
much  feared  by  his  opponents;  but  greatly  beloved, 
not  only  by  those  immediately  about  him,  but  by 
large  numbers  to  whom  he  is  personally  unknown. 

"He  will  die,  whether  in  or  out  of  office,  in  an 
exceptionally  high  position:  greatly  lamented;  and 
surrounded  to  the  end  by  all  the  magnificent  plan- 
etary influences  of  a  propitious  Jupiter. 

"No  figure  I  have  drawn  more  surprises  me  than 
this:  it  is  so  completely  opposed  to  what  I  myself 
should  have  augured,  not  only  from  the  rest  of  his 
career,  but  from  my  knowledge  of  the  man. 

"He  will  bequeath  a  repute  out  of  all  proportion  to 
the  opinion  now  entertained  of  his  intellect  by  those 
who  think  most  highlj'  of  it.  Greater  honors  far  than 
he  has  yet  acquired  are  in  store  for  him. 

"His  enemies,  though  active,  are  not  persevering. 

"His  official  friends,  though  not  ardent,  will  yet 
minister  to  his  success." 

192 


J 


BULWEll-LYTTON    AS    BEST   FRIEND 

The  Earl  of  Lytton's  comment  is:  "The  geomantic 
comlusious  were  not  suggested  by  my  father's  views, 
but  in  glaring  opposition  to  them.  The  event,  which 
verified  his  divination,  contradicted  his  judgment." 
And  he  speaks  of  the  disesteem  in  which  Disraeli  was 
held  "as  merely  a  spiriting  charlatan"  by  "mediocre 
men"  for  many  years;  but  we  have  to  remember, 
though  the  romance  be  lessened,  that  in  1860 — if  that 
be  the  document's  true  date — Disraeli  had  been  mar- 
ried for  twenty-one  years,  had  led  the  Tory  party, 
and  been  twice  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 

Disraeli  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  traveling  for  his 
health,  had  been  absent  from  England  for  about  five 
months,  when  he  reached  Constantinople  on  the  last 
day  of  November,  1830.  He  had  been  depressed  about 
his  slow  progress  toward  health;  but  at  first  sight 
of  Constantinople  he  owned:  "I  feel  an  excitement 
I  thought  was  dead."  A  month  later  his  experiences 
were  given  in  the  following  letter  to  Bulwer,  who  was 
already  an  author  with  the  ear  of  the  town,  and  who 
was  to  go  to  Parliament  a  few  months  later  for  St. 
Ives.  Bulwer,  whose  powers  of  note-writing  were  the 
most  prodigious  ever  known,  had  been  in  correspond- 
ence with  Isaac  Disraeli  about  men  and  books — 
Fuller's  works  and  the  character  of  Cardinal  Mazarin; 
and  Disraeli  the  younger,  slipping  in,  was  rewarded 
by  praises  of  Thian  Grfy  and  Captain  Popanilla.  A 
gift  from  Disraeli  of  Turkish  tobacco — the  only  pipe- 
tobacco  Bulwer  ever  smoked — followed;  and  then  be- 
gan a  personal  acquaintance  which  between  such 
men  was  certain  to  develop  quickly  into  friendship. 
14  193 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Bulwer  read  The  Young  Duke  in  manuscript,  and  put 
Disraeli  out  of  love  with  it  by  objections  that  he  took 
with  more  good-nature  than  is  common  under  those 
critical  conditions.  A  few  months  later  he  was  him- 
self able  to  regard  his  book  with  as  aloof  and  unpa- 
ternal  an  eye  as  Bulwer's  even.  "I  don't  care  a  jot 
about  The  Yoimg  Duke,^^  he  declared.  "I  never  staked 
any  fame  on  it.  It  may  take  its  chance."  This  he 
wrote  home  when  absent  on  the  journey  which  yielded 
also  the  following  letter  to  Edward  Lytton  Bulwer 
(first  Lord  Lytton): 

"  Constantinople, 
"  December  27th,  1830. 

"My  dear  Bulwer:  In  spite  of  the  extraordinary 
times  and  engrossing  topics  on  which  we  have  fallen, 
I  flatter  myself  that  you  will  be  glad  to  hear  of  my  ex- 
istence, and  know  that  it  is  in  a  state  not  quite  so 
forlorn  as  when  I  last  had  the  pleasure  of  enjoying 
your  society.  Since  then  I  have  traveled  through 
Spain,  Greece,  and  Albania,  and  am  now  a  resident  in 
this  famous  city. 

"I  can  not  easily  express  how  much  I  was  de- 
lighted with  the  first  country.  I  no  longer  wonder  at 
the  immortality  of  Cervantes;  and  I  perpetually  de- 
tected, in  the  picturesque  and  al  fresco  life  of  his 
countrymen,  the  sources  of  his  inspiration.  The  Al- 
hambra,  and  other  Saracenic  remains,  the  innumer- 
able iMurillos,  and,  above  all,  their  oUa  podridas,  de- 
lighted me  in  turn.  I  arrived  at  Malta  time  enough 
to  name  the  favorite  horse  for  the  races,  Paul  Clifford; 
and  I  have  since  learnt,  by  a  letter  at  this  place, 
that  he  won  the  plate.  While  at  the  little  military 
hothouse,  I  heard  that  Albania  was  in  a  flaming  in- 
surrection; and,  having  always  had  a  taste  for  cam- 

194 


BULWER-T.YTTON    AS   BEST   FRIEND 

paiguiug,  1  hurried  oft'  with  a  couple  of  friends  to  offer 
our  services  to  the  Grand  Vizier. 

*'We  found  the  insurrection,  by  the  time  of  our 
arrival,  nearly  crushed.  And  so  we  turned  our  mil- 
itary trip  into  a  visit  of  congratulation  at  headquar- 
ters. I  must  reserve  for  our  meeting  any  account  of 
our  visit.  I  certainly  passed  at  Yanina  ten  of  the 
most  extraordinary  days  of  my  life;  and  often  wished 
you  had  been  my  companion. 

"Of  all  the  places  I  have  yet  visited,  Athens  most 
completely  realized  all  I  could  have  wished.  The  place 
requires  no  associations  to  render  it  one  of  the  most 
delightful  in  the  globe.  I  am  not  surprised  that  the 
fine  taste  of  the  dwellers  in  this  delicate  land  should 
have  selected  the  olive  for  their  chosen  tree,  and  the 
violet  for  their  favorite  flower. 

"I  confess  to  you  that  my  Turkish  prejudices 
are  very  much  confirmed  by  my  residence  in  Turkey. 
The  life  of  this  people  greatly  accords  with  my  taste, 
which  is  naturally  somewhat  indolent  and  melan- 
choly, and  I  do  not  think  it  would  disgust  you.  •  To 
repose  on  voluptuous  ottomans,  and  smoke  superb 
pipes;  daily  to  indulge  in  the  luxuries  of  a  bath  which 
requires  half  a  dozen  attendants  for  its  perfection; 
to  court  the  air  in  a  carved  caique,  by  shores  which 
are  a  perpetual  scene;  and  to  find  no  exertion  greater 
than  a  canter  on  a  Barb;  this  is,  I  think,  a  far  more 
sensible  life  than  all  the  bustle  of  clubs,  all  the  boring 
of  drawing-rooms,  and  all  the  coarse  vulgarity  of  our 
political  controversies.  And  all  this,  I  assure  you,  is, 
without  any  coloring  or  exaggeration,  the  life  which 
may  be  here  commanded — a  life  accompanied  by  a 
thousand  sources  of  calm  enjoyment,  and  a  thousand 
modes  of  mellowed  pleasure,  w^hich  it  w^ould  Aveary 
you  to  relate,  and  which  I  leave  to  your  own  lively 
imagination. 

195 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"I  can  say  nothing  about  our  meeting,  but  pray 
that  it  may  be  sooner  than  I  can  expect.  I  send  you 
a  tobacco  bag,  that  you  may  sometimes  remember  me. 
If  you  have  leisure  to  write  me  a  line,  anything  direct- 
ed to  Messrs.  Hunter  &  Ross,  Malta,  will  be  forwarded 
to  whatever  part  of  the  Levant  I  may  reside  in. 

"I  mend  slowly,  but  mend.  The  seasons  have 
greatly  favored  me.  Continual  heat,  and  even  here, 
where  the  winter  is  proverbially  cold,  there  is  a  sum- 
mer sky.  Remember  me  most  kindly  to  your  brother, 
and  believe  me,  ever,  my  dear  Bulwer, 

"Your  most  faithful, 

"Benj.  Disraeli, 

"P.  S. — I  have  just  got  through  a  pile  of  Gali- 
gnanVs.  What  a  confusion  and  what  an  excellent 
pantomime  '  Lord  Mayor's  Day;  or,  Harlequin 
Brougham'!     Oh,   for  the  days  of  Aristophanes,   or 

Foote,  or  even  Scaramouch!     D n  the  Licenser! 

"D." 

People  in  search  of  the  shadows  which  coming 
events  are  said  to  cast  before  them  may  find  them 
falling  on  this  paper  in  lines  that  spell  out  "my 
Turkish  prejudices."  He  wrote  to  Edward  Lytton 
Bulwer  (first  Lord  Lytton): 

[1832.] 
*  «  *  *  * 

"It  seemed  to  me  that  the  barriers  of  my  life  were 
all  simultaneously  falling — friendship  with  the  rest. 
But  yon,  too,  have  suffered;  and  will  therefore  sym- 
pathize with  one  of  too  irritable  a  temperament, 
whose  philosophy  generally  arrives  too  late. 

^^Om-  friendship,  my  dear  Bulwer,  has  already 
stood  many  a  test.  If  I  analyze  the  causes  of  its 
strength,  I  would  ascribe  them,  in  some  degree  at 

196 


BLLWER-LYTTON    AS    BEST   FRIEND 

least,  to  a  warm  heart  ou  my  part  and  a  generous 
nature  upon  yours. 

"Then  let  this  friendship  never  dissolve.  For  my 
heart  shall  never  grow  cold  to  you,  and  be  yours  al- 
ways indulgent  to 

"Your  affectionate  friend, 

"B.  D." 

"The  friendship  never  did  dissolve,"  writes  the 
son,  "because,  upon  both  sides,  it  was  based  on  a  well- 
grounded  confidence  in  the  fine  and  sterling  qualities 
to  which  it  owed  its  origin.  But  time  and  circum- 
stance gradually  diminished  their  intercourse  with- 
out abating  their  esteem.  They  had  strong  opinions 
and  sympathies  in  common,  and  appeared  for  a  time 
to  be  traveling  the  same  road.  Both  were  throwing  off 
in  works  of  imagination  the  thoughts  and  feelings 
suggested  by  a  keen  observation  of  the  world  around 
them.  Both  had  set  their  hearts  on  getting  into  Par- 
liament, that  they  might  play  their  part  in  the  one 
grand  arena  of  politics.  Both  were  fighting  an  un- 
befriended  battle,  and  owed  nothing  in  their  literary 
life  to  the  support  of  a  clique,  or  in  public  life  to  the 
favor  of  a  party.  Both  were  successful  in  the  double 
career  they  adopted.  But  the  highest  success  of  one 
was  in  politics,  and  that  of  the  other  was  in  literature. 
Here  was  the  difference  which,  in  spite  of  the  parallel 
in  their  lives,  led  them,  as  time  went  on,  into  divergent 
paths.  It  may  be  discerned  in  the  earliest  writings 
of  Disraeli  that  his  master  ambition  was  to  become  a 
power  in  the  State.  With  all  his  love  of  letters,  the  de- 
sire to  take  his  place  among  the  rulers  of  the  world  so 

197 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

vastly  predominated  that  his  ultimate  end  in  litera- 
ture was  to  use  it  as  a  ladder  to  political  life.  His 
native  indolence,  his  narrow  means,  his  pecuniary 
difficulties,  his  isolated  position,  his  repeated  checks 
— all  were  impotent  to  resist  the  indomitable  will  and 
persevering  genius  which  carried  him  at  length, 
amidst  unusual  acclaim,  to  the  summit  of  his  aspira- 
tions. With  my  father  the  passion  for  letters  pre- 
ponderated. And  whereas  literature  was  but  an  ap- 
pendage to  the  political  career  of  Disraeli,  politics 
were  only  the  appendage  to  the  literary  labors  of  his 
friend.  Thus,  when  afterward  they  came  together  as 
colleagues  in  the  same  Cabinet,  it  was  the  reunion  of 
persons  who  had  been  following  distinctly  separate 
vocations,  and  had  contracted  dissimilar  habits  of 
mind.  The  cordiality  and  the  sentiment  remained; 
and  in  their  political  principles  they  had  more  in  com- 
mon with  each  other  than  either  of  them  had  with  the 
mass  of  those  around  them." 

This  last  allusion  illustrates,  and  takes  us  on  to, 
the  association  of  Bulwer,  then  a  nominal  Radical, 
afterward  a  Tory-Radical,  with  Disraeli,  who  was, 
from  the  first,  what  Bulwer  became.  In  1832  Bulwer, 
anxious  to  get  Disraeli  into  Parliament  for  Disraeli's 
sake,  and  perhaps  a  little  for  his  own  ("Politics  are  a 
dull  trade,"  says  a  third  novelist,  and  politicians  dull 
tradesmen  for  the  most  part  uncongenial  enough  to 
a  Man  of  Feeling),  was  a  dangerous  intermediary  be- 
tween Disraeli  and  the  conventional  senator,  as 
events  proved. 


198 


CLUBS   AND   CLUBS 


To  the  Secretary  of  the  Westminster  Reform  Club. 

' '  3  Park  Street,  Grosvenob  Square, 
"January  29th  [1835]. 

"Sir:  Having  received  a  letter  from  you  this 
morning,  apprising  me  tliat  I  am  a  threatened  de- 
Clubs  and  faiilter  in  the  matter  of  the  Westminster 
Clubs.  Club,  I  beg  to  inform  you  that  I  never  en- 

tered the  walls  of  the  clubhouse  but  once,  and  that 
was  with  the  intention  of  paying  my  admission  fee 
and  subscription.  On  that  occasion  I  was  informed 
that  the  secretary  was  absent  in  Ireland;  and  I  freely 
confess  to  you  that  I  was  then  unable  to  obtain  any 
satisfactory  evidence  that  the  club  had  a  hona-fide  ex- 
istence. If,  however,  I  have  been  acting  under  a  mis- 
apprehension, and  I  am  to  understand  that  the  club 
really  exists,  without  any  view  of  immediate  dissolu- 
tion, I  shall  be  happy  to  forward  the  check  which  you 
require.    I  am,  yours,  etc., 

"B.  Disraeli." 

"  March  8th  [18351 

"Sir:  I  enclose  you  a  draft  ^  for  the  sum  you  re- 
quire, and  as  my  engagements  have  not  permitted  me 
to  avail  myself  of  the  Westminster  Club,  I  shall  feel 
obliged  by  your  doing  me  the  favor  of  withdrawing  my 
name  from  the  list  of  the  members  of  the  society. 

"I  am,  sir,  yours,  etc., 

"B.  Disraeli." 

A  standing  fable,  which  has  the  excuse  of  passing 
as  a  standing  joke,  is  this:  That  Disraeli  was  once 
a  member  of  the  Reform  Club,  as  Gladstone  had  been 

'  This  draft  the  club  returned. 

109 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

a  member  of  the  Carlton.  Members  of  the  two  clubs 
exchange  the  blandishment:  "We  supplied  jour 
party  with  its  leader."  "And  we  yours."  The  genesis 
of  the  story  is  easily  traced;  and  leads,  as  easily,  to 
its  exodus. 

"Mr.  Disraeli  is  actually  a  member  of  the  West- 
minster Reform  Club,  established  last  year  in  Great 
George  Street,  Westminster,  by  Messrs.  Tennyson, 
Hume,  and  others  of  the  Liberal  party."  So  wrote 
an  elector  of  Westminster  to  the  Morning  Chronicle 
of  April  25,  1835;  and  so,  since  that  date,  have  others 
written,  time  after  time,  with  this  added  spice — that 
they  pitted  against  it  Disraeli's  instant  denial: 
"The  Westminster  Reform  Club  is  a  club  I  never 
heard  of,  and  I  never  belonged  to  a  political  club  in 
my  life." 

"Here,"  says  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor,  "is  a  distinct 
issue  of  fact — an  issue  which  decides  irrevocably  in 
favor  [of]  or  against  the  personal  veracity  of  the 
persons  engaged  in  it."  That  is  an  opinion  still  com- 
monly held  (though  for  the  most  part  with  a  tolerant 
indulgence)  in  the  smoking-room  of  the  Reform  Club; 
for  the  goodly  association,  now  placed  in  Pall  Mall, 
had  its  first  shelter  in  the  basement  and  first  floor  of 
24  Great  George  Street,  Westminster — a  portion  of 
his  own  residence  sublet  by  Alderman  Sir  Matthew 
Wood,  M.P.  Clubs  did  not  then,  as  now,  arise  fully 
equipped  at  each  great  corner:  and  the  following 
memorandum  suggests  the  process  of  a  club  in  the 
making: 


200 


CLUBS    AND   CLUBS 

"Westminster   Club. 

"  April  M,  1834. 

"The  Secretary  will  attend  at  the  clubhouse,  24 
Great  George  Street,  from  twelve  to  three  each  day 
till  the  14th,  to  receive  all  future  communications  for 
admission  to  the  club." 

Such  communications  were  not  very  numerous; 
and  perhaps  the  organizers  found  it  a  little  difficult 
to  paj-  the  annual  rent  of  one  thousand  guineas  to 
the  Alderman  for  rent,  furniture,  and  service.  One 
of  these,  Disraeli's  friend  Henry  Lytton  Bulwer,  who 
had  his  brother's  knowledge  of  the  Radical  as  well  as 
the  Tory  in  Disraeli,  asked  him  to  join  the  Westmin- 
ster Club,  probably  with  little  explanation  of  its  scope, 
lest  the  amphibious  politician  should  refuse  to  be 
landed.  Through  the  kindness  of  a  present  member 
of  the  Reform,  and  by  a  reference  to  the  careful  his- 
tory of  the  club  drawn  up  by  another  member,  Mr. 
Louis  Fagan,  I  give  the  following  entry  appearing  on 
page  51  of  the  still-preserved  minute-book  of  the  pre- 
cursor Westminster  Club,  and  dated  July  2,  1834: 

^'Resolved,  That  Mr.  Disraeli,  proposed  by  Mr. 
Bulwer  and  seconded  by  Dr.  Elmore,  should  be  elect- 
ed a  member  of  the  club." 

Mr.  Disraeli,  if  he  received  news  of  his  election, 
made  no  acknowledgment  of  it;  for,  three  weeks  later, 
the  secretary  reported  that  ''the  subscriptions  of  the 
following  members  remain  still  unpaid" — Disraeli's 
among  them;  and  Henry  Bulwer's,  too,  which  sug- 
gests that  perhaps  he  had  canvassed  for  a  club  he  did 

201 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

not  really  know  much  about,  or  that  he  had  lost  touch 
of  it  and  no  longer  pressed  it  on  Disraeli  as  a  place 
of  meeting.  I  note,  too,  that  during  these  weeks 
Disraeli  made  his  debut  at  another  club — Almack's; 
and  what  is  something  to  the  point,  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Lord  Lyndhurst,  to  whom  he  was  imme- 
diately attracted,  and  who  helped  to  draw  him  into 
the  established  ruts  of  party.  Anyway,  in  the  last 
month  of  the  year  the  payment  of  the  subscription — 
the  condition  precedent  to  membership — had  not 
been  made;  and  the  committee  carried  the  motion 
"That  Lord  Dunboyne,  Mr.  Disraeli,  and  Mr.  Henry 
Lytton  Bulw^er  be  written  to,  informing  them  that  the 
committee  have  observed  by  the  banker's  book  that 
their  subscriptions  have  not  been  paid,  and  that  the 
secretary  is  to  apprise  them  thereof."  What  Lord 
Dunboyne  and  Mr.  Bulwer  did,  I  do  not  know;  but  I 
never  heard  either  of  them  denounced  as  a  "defaulter" 
— the  term  applied,  with  the  usual  animus,  to  their 
comrade.  He,  at  any  rate,  at  once  sent  a  check  for 
fifteen  guineas  (a  large  sum  for  him,  and  one  for  which 
he  had  incurred  no  legal  liability),  stating  that  he  had 
not  been  able  to  use  the  club,  and  requesting  that  his 
name  should  be  removed  from  its  books.  This  was 
done;  and  the  committee,  who  probably  knew  more 
than  we  of  the  misunderstandings  incident  to  the 
formation  of  the  first  membership  list,  resolved: 
"That  the  check  sent  by  Mr.  Disraeli  be  returned  to 
him,  and  he  be  informed  that  the  committee  declines 
its  acceptance,  having  no  inclination  to  accept  money 
from  gentlemen  whose  engagements  render  them  un- 

202 


CLUBS   AND    CLUBS 

able  to  avail  themselves  of  the  conveniences  of  the 
club." 

Thus  (with  a  surprising  pleasure  to  see  his  fifteen 
guineas  again)  ended  Disraeli's  commerce — we  can 
not  say  connection — with  a  club  which,  since  he 
would  not  go  to  it,  in  due  course  came  half  round  the 
political  compass  to  him,  blackballing  Irish  Home 
Rulers  under  the  very  frowns  of  the  counterfeit  pre- 
sentment of  O'Connell,  one  of  the  founders  of  the 
parent  house. 

Two  specific  errors  remain  for  exposure.  "The 
Westminster  Reform  Club"  was  the  name  thrown  at 
Disraeli  at  Taunton  when  he  contested  the  seat  in  the 
spring  of  1835.  The  reply,  made  with  a  brevity  suited 
to  the  hustings,  was:  "The  Westminster  Reform  Club 
is  a  club  of  which  I  never  heard."  The  registers  con- 
firm Disraeli:  the  club  was  the  Westminster  Club, 
not  the  Westminster  Reform  Club,  when  he  sent  his 
check:  it  did  not  change  its  name  to  the  Westminster 
Reform  Club,  and  thus  declare  its  political  character, 
till  February,  1835 — only  three  months  before  the 
date  of  Disraeli's  repudiation  of  any  knowledge  of  it 
by  that  name.  The  second  misstatement,  originally 
made  and  since  echoed,  was  that  Hume  was  one  of  its 
founders — an  association  which  was  supposed  to 
make  clear  to  Disraeli  the  party  character  of  the  club 
and  to  prove  continuity,  on  Disraeli's  part,  from  tlie 
rapprochement  established  between  him  and  Hume  by 
the  other  Bulwer  throe  years  earlier.  Here  again  the 
club  books  befriend  Disraeli,  for  they  show  that 
Hume  was  not  elected  to  the  Westminster  Club  till 

203 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

February  7,   1835,   only  the  day  before  Disraeli  re- 
quested the  withdrawal  of  his  name. 

The  recorders  of  to-day  will  make  two  leading  notes 
on  this  transaction:  the  first  the  honorable  payment 
made  by  Disraeli;  the  second  its  honorable  return  by 
the  club,  itself  as  hard-pressed  as  he,  in  sight  of  the 
insolvency  which  overtook  it  and  taxed  its  members 
eleven  guineas  a  head  in  the  April  of  1836.  Yet  the 
Comic  Spirit  shall  not  be  grudged  one  last  grimace. 
Mr.  Sydney,  presenting  the  old  Westminster  Club's 
papers  to  the  Reform  Club  Library,  where  they  now 
are,  makes  this  comment:  "You  will  perceive  the 
curious  fact  that  Mr.  Disraeli  was  desirous  to  become 
a  member,  but  the  honor  of  his  association  was  de- 
clined." 

In  the  early  summer  of  1832  Disraeli  had  a  hint 
of  the  possible  elevation  of  Sir  Thomas  Baring — one 
The  Scramble  ^^  ^^^  sitting  Whig  members  for  Wy- 
or  a  Seat—  combe — to  the  House  of  Lords.  That 
meant  a  vacancy  which  a  young  neighbor- 
ing politician  at  Bradenham  House,  with  definite 
opinions  but  indefinite  labels,  was  particularly 
anxious  to  fill.  Disgusted  by  Whigs  and  Tories  alike, 
he  stood  alone,  the  founder  of  a  new  National  party. 
Into  that  wide-embracing  fold,  Tories  and  Radicals 
alike  were  invited  to  enter,  and  there  were  two  or 
three  occasions — once  to  Peel — when  Disraeli  spoke 
of  himself  as  a  "Radical,"  a  name  far  less  obnoxious 
to  him  than  that  of  either  Whig  or  Tory.  It  was  a 
name  which  required,  and  got,  a  note  of  explanation; 

204 


THE   SCRAMBT.E   FOR   A   SEAT 

aud  also  demanded  it  as  applied  to  him  in  later  life 
when,  as  leader  of  the  Tory  party,  he  was  yet  de- 
scribed by  Mr.  Bernal  Osborne  as  the  "greatest  Rad- 
ical in  that  House."  In  1832  the  Whigs  were  in  the 
way:  they  had  made  Reform  their  cry,  yet  had  done 
little  to  carry  out  their  professions;  they  were,  more- 
over, an  oligarchy  of  "the  great  governing  families," 
barring  the  way  of  political  aspirants — of  one  polit- 
ical aspirant  in  particular — with  no  "connections." 
Disraeli  had  therefore  a  public  and  a  personal  cause 
against  them.  Bulwer,  who  may  be  allowed  the 
credit  of  having  liked  and  trusted,  if  he  did  not  al- 
together understand  him  from  the  outset,  made  the 
most  of  Disraeli  the  Radical;  the  least  of  Disraeli  the 
Tory;  and,  going  to  O'Connell  and  to  Hume  to  get  a 
benediction  on  the  political  Jekyll,  did  not  breathe  a 
word  about  the  political  Hyde.  Hume,  therefore,  at 
Bulwer's  request,  wrote  from  Bryanston  Square  (June 
2,  1832)  to  Disraeli  at  Bradenham,  as  to  one  "pledged 
to  support  Reform  and  economy  in  every  department 
as  far  as  the  same  can  be  effected  consistent  with  the 
best  interests  of  the  country" — a  program  com- 
mon, one  supposes,  to  all  parties,  and  one  evidently 
based  on  some  carefully  guarded  phrasing  of  the  can- 
didates.^ 

'  As  Hume's  letter  to  Disraeli,  and  all  the  facts  in  connection  with  it,  were 
made  the  subject  of  red-hot  controversy  some  forty  months  later,  the  full 
text  of  it  should  he  within  easy  reference  of  the  reader  :  "  Bryanston  Square, 
June  2,  1832.  Sir — As  England  can  only  reap  the  benefit  of  Reform  by 
the  electors  doini^  their  duty  in  selcctinp  honest,  independent,  and  talented 
men,  I  am  much  pleased  to  learn  from  our  mutual  friend,  Mr.  E.  L.  Bulwor, 
that  you  are  about  to  offer  yourself  as  a  candidate  to  represent  Wycombe  in 
the  new  Parliament.      I  have  no  personal  influence  at  that  place,  or  I  would 

205 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

To  that  letter  of  commendation  Disraeli  sent  the 
following  reply: 

To  Joseph  Hume,  Esq.,  M.P. 

"Bradenham  House,  Wycombe, 
"Ju7ie  5th,  1832. 

"Sir:  I  have  had  the  honor  and  the  gratification  of 
receiving  your  letter  this  morning.  Accept  my  sin- 
cere, my  most  cordial  thanks.  It  will  be  my  endeavor 
that  you  shall  not  repent  the  confidence  you  have 
reposed  in  me. 

"Believe  me,  sir,  that  if  it  be  my  fortune  to  be  re- 
turned in  the  present  instance  to  a  reformed  Parlia- 
ment, I  shall  remember  with  satisfaction  that  that 
return  is  mainly  attributable  to  the  interest  ex- 
pressed in  my  success  by  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished and  able  of  our  citizens, 

"I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  your  obliged  and 
faithful  servant,  "B.  Disraeli." 

We  come  back  again  and  again  to  Wycombe  before 
we  have  done  with  the  ugly  sparrings  of  speech  that 
attend  Disraeli's  getting  to  his  place  in  Parliament. 
For  the  moment,  however,  we  look  three  years  ahead, 
when  Disraeli  contested  Taunton,  still  as  a  Democrat- 
ic Tory,  but  bearing  the  official  Tory  label,  at  a  by-elec- 

jise  it  immediately  in  your  favor ;  but  I  should  hope  that  the  day  has  arrived 
when  the  electors  will  consider  the  qualifications  of  the  candidates,  and  in  the 
exercise  of  the  franchise  prove  themselves  worthy  of  the  new  rights  they  will 
obtain  by  the  Reform.  I  hope  the  reformers  will  rally  round  you,  who  enter- 
tain liberal  opinions  in  every  branch  of  government,  and  are  prepared  to 
pledge  yourself  to  support  Reform  and  economy  in  every  department  as  far 
as  the  same  can  be  effected  consistent  with  the  best  interests  of  the  country. 
I  shall  only  add  that  I  shall  be  rejoiced  to  see  you  in  the  new  Parliament,  iu 
the  confidence  that  you  will  redeem  your  pledges,  and  give  satisfaction  to 
your  constituents  if  they  will  place  you  there.  Wishing  you  success  in  your 
canvass,  I  remain,  your  obedient  servant,  Joseph  Hume." 

206 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A    SEAT 

tion  brought  about  by  Mr.  Heury  Labouchere's  ac- 
ceptance of  office.  Out  of  this  electoral  fight  and 
defeat  arose  the  largely  retrospective  O'Connell  cor- 
respondence. Very  ungracious  as  a  sign  of  the  man- 
ners of  the  time,  it  illustrates  the  detachment  of 
Disraeli  the  man  from  Disraeli  the  publicist.  Once 
he  had  the  end  in  view,  a  pen  of  gall,  if  that  would  do, 
but,  if  not,  a  sword,  a  bullet,  was  his  means,  coolly 
considered,  nicely  weighed.  Even  at  seeming  des- 
perate grip  with  O'Connell  or  the  Globe  editor  he  is 
still  an  onlooker.  He  calculates  while  he  curses.  The 
"general  effect"  is  the  thing,  he  tells  his  sister,  very 
much  as  Cardinal  Newman  once  told  Sir  William 
Cope  that  he  used  loud  words  about  Kingsley  because, 
if  he  spoke  in  his  ordinary  tone,  nobody  listened. 

There  is  always  a  public  in  England,  perhaps  else- 
where, that  either  does  not  hear,  or  does  not  believe 
you  are  really  in  earnest,  until  you  shout.  And  when 
a  man  had  to  shout  against  O'Connell,  the  air  must 
indeed  be  rent.  Disraeli  at  Taunton,  attacking  the 
Whigs,  said  in  the  language  of  hyperbole  that  they 
had  shaken  O'Connell's  "bloody  hand."  That  is  done 
with  rhetoric  now,  and  Tory  Mr.  George  Wyndham 
has  given  it  its  quietus;  but  it  was  repeated  in  mid- 
dling years  to  weariness  under  Lord  Carnarvon  as 
well  as  under  Lord  Spencer,  at  any  hint  of  alliance 
between  the  English  occupiers  and  the  Irish  leaders 
of  a  peasantry  driven  by  wrong  and  sufferings  to  seek 
the  wild  justice  of  revenge  (better  being  denied  them) 
in  agrarian  crime.  The  "bloody  hand,"  though  so 
honorable  a  device  in  heraldry,  was  an  attribution 

207 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

boisterously  resented  by  O'Connell;  who,  after  the 
ways  of  political  warfare,  may  have  appeared  to  take 
it  in  too  literal  and  personal  a  sense,  recognizing  in  it 
a  catch-phrase  which,  if  passed  into  currency,  would 
spoil  some  of  the  good  business  he  hoped  to  transact 
with  Lord  Melbourne.  For  this  was  even  that  Disraeli 
for  whom,  at  Bulwer's  request,  O'Connell  had  written 
a  letter  of  recommendation  to  the  electors  of  Wy- 
combe! Not  for  him  the  niceties  of  a  new  party — a 
political  reformation:  he  saw  only  a  flagrant  case  of 
tergiversation  in  the  Tory  candidate  at  Taunton, 
whose  alien  name  and  race  made  him,  moreover,  an 
easy  victim  for  ridicule.  So  out  poured  the  invective, 
where  the  environment  was  altogether  congenial — at 
a  political  meeting  in  Dublin. 

"In  the  annals  of  political  turpitude,"  he  said, 
"there  is  not  anything  deserving  the  name  of  black- 
guardism to  equal  that  attack  upon  me.  What  is  my 
acquaintance  with  this  man?  Just  this.  In  1831,  or 
the  beginning  of  1832,  the  borough  of  Wycombe  be- 
came vacant.  It  appears  that  he  or  some  one  of  his 
name  was  the  author  of  one  or  two  novels  dignified 
with  the  title  of  Curiosities  of  Literature}  He  got  an 
introduction  to  me,  and  wrote  me  a  letter  stating 
that  I  was  a  Radical  reformer,  and  as  he  was  also  a 
Radical  and  was  going  to  stand  upon  the  Radical  in- 
terest for  the  borough  of  Wycombe,  where  he  said 
there  were  many  persons  of  that  way  of  thinking  who 
would   be   influenced  by  my  opinion,  he  would   feel 

'  This  absurdity  appears  in  one  report  and  not  in  another,  but  is  all  a  piece 
with  the  rest  of  the  speech  for  accuracy. 

208 


THE   SCRAM HLE    FOR   A    SEA'l 

obliged  by  receiving  a  letter  from  me,  recommenda- 
tor}'  of  bim  as  a  Radical.  His  letter  to  me  was  so 
distinct  upon  tbe  subject,  that  I  immediately  com- 
plied with  the  request,  and  composed  as  good  an 
epistle  as  I  could  in  his  behalf.  I  am  in  the  habit  of 
letter-writing,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  thought  this  letter  so 
valuable  that  he  not  only  took  the  autograph,  but  had 
it  printed  and  placarded.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  ground 
upon  which  he  canvassed  the  borough.^  He  was,  how- 
ever, defeated,  but  that  was  not  my  fault.  The  next 
thing  I  heard  of  him  was  that  he  had  started  upon  the 
Kadical  interest  for  Marylebone,  but  was  again  de- 
feated. Having  been  twice  defeated,  on  the  Radical 
interest,-  he  was  just  the  fellow  for  the  Conserva- 
tives; and  accordingly  he  joined  a  Conservative  club, 

■  A  rollicking  account  of  the  transaction.  It  should  be  noted  that  Bulwer, 
anxious  to  get  Disraeli  into  Parliament,  and  not  Disraeli,  as  here  stated,  wrote 
to  O'Connell ;  and  that  to  Bulwer,  not  to  Disraeli,  was  the  reply  addressed. 
This  letter,  which  does  not  appear  to  put  Disraeli  under  any  excessive  obliga- 
tion, ran  as  follows  :  "  Parliament  Street,  June  3d,  1832.  My  dear  Sir — 
In  reply  to  j'our  inquiry,  I  regret  to  say  that  I  have  no  acquaintance  at 
Wycombe  to  whom  I  could  recommend  Mr.  Disraeli.  It  grieves  me,  there- 
fore, to  be  unable  to  serve  him  on  his  canvass.  I  am  as  convinced  as  you  are 
of  the  great  advantage  the  cause  of  genuine  Reform  would  obtain  from  his 
return.  His  readiness  to  carry  the  Reform  Bill  into  practi(!al  effect  toward 
tlie  ])roduction  of  cheap  government  and  free  institutions  is  enhanced  by  the 
tiilfut  and  information  which  he  brings  to  the  good  cause.  I  should  certainly 
exj)ress  full  reliance  on  his  political  and  personal  integrity,  and  it  would  give 
me  the  greatest  pleasure  to  assist  in  any  way  in  procuring  his  return,  but  that, 
as  I  have  told  you,  I  have  no  claim  on  Wycombe,  and  can  only  express  my 
surprise  that  it  should  be  thought  I  had  any.  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  my 
dear  sir,  yours  very  faithfully,  Danief.  O'Connell." 

'  Counting  Marylebone  (where  he  issued  an  address  but  did  not  go  to  the 
poll),  thrice  rather  than  twice.  And  the  half-truth  which  doscriiies  the  Radi- 
cal-Tory as  a  Radical  tnerely  started  off  on  its  long  alluring  round  from  that 
day  forward. 

15  209 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

started  for  two  or  three  places  on  the  Conservative 
interest.  How  is  he  now  engaged?  Why,  in  abusing 
the  Kadicals,  eulogizing  the  King  and  the  Church,  like 
a  true  Conservative.  At  Taunton  this  miscreant  had 
the  audacity  to  style  me  an  incendiary.  Why,  I  was 
a  greater  incendiary  in  1831  than  I  am  at  present,  if 
I  ever  were  one;  and  if  I  am,  he  is  doubly  so  for  having 
employed  me.  Then  he  calls  me  a  traitor.  My  answer 
to  that  is — he  is  a  liar.  He  is  a  liar  in  actions  and  in 
words.  His  life  is  a  living  lie.  He  is  a  disgrace  to  his 
species.  What  state  of  society  must  that  be  that  can 
tolerate  such  a  creature — having  the  audacity  to 
come  forward  with  one  set  of  principles  at  one  time, 
and  obtain  political  assistance  by  reason  of  those 
principles,  and  at  another  to  profess  diametrically 
the  reverse?  His  life,  I  again  say,  is  a  living  lie.  He 
is  the  most  degraded  of  his  species  and  kind;  and 
England  is  degraded  in  tolerating,  or  having  upon  the 
face  of  her  society,  a  miscreant  of  his  abominable, 
foul,  and  atrocious  nature.  My  language  is  harsh, 
and  I  owe  an  apology  for  it,  but  I  will  tell  why  I  owe 
that  apology. 

"It  is  for  this  reason,  that  if  there  be  harsher  words 
in  the  British  language,  I  should  use  them,  because  it 
is  the  harshest  of  all  terms  that  would  be  descriptive 
of  a  wretch  of  this  species.  He  is  just  the  fellow  for 
the  Conservative  club.  I  suppose  if  Sir  Robert  Peel 
had  been  out  of  the  way  when  he  was  called  upon  to 
take  office,  this  fellow  would  have  undertaken  to  sup- 
ply his  place.  He  has  falsehood  enough,  depravity 
enough,  and  selfishness  enough  to  become  the  fitting 

210 


THE   SCllAMHLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

loader  of  the  Conserviitives.  He  is  Couservatism  per- 
souitied.  llis  name  shows  liim  by  descent  a  Jew.  His 
fatlier  became  a  convert.  He  is  better  for  tliat  in  tliis 
world.'  I  hope,  of  course,  he  will  be  the  better  for 
it  in  the  next.  There  is  a  habit  of  underrating  that 
great  and  oppressed  nation— the  Jews.  They  are 
cruelly  persecuted  by  persons  calling  themselves 
Christians;  but  no  person  ever  yet  was  a  Christian 
who  persecuted.  The  cruelest  persecution  they  suffer 
is  upon  their  character,  bj'  the  foul  names  which  their 
calumniators  bestowed  upon  them  before  they  car- 
ried their  atrocities  into  effect.  They  feel  the  perse- 
cution of  calumnj^  severer  upon  them  than  the  perse- 
cution of  actual  force,  and  the  tyranny'  of  actual 
torture.  It  will  not  be  supposed,  therefore,  that  when 
I  speak  of  Disraeli  as  the  descendant  of  a  Jew,  I  mean 
to  tarnish  him  on  that  account.  They  were  once 
the  chosen  people  of  God.  There  were  miscreants 
amongst  them,  however,  also,  and  it  must  have  cer- 
tainly been  from  one  of  those  that  Disraeli  descended. 
He  possesses  just  the  qualities  of  the  impudent  thief 
who  died  upon  the  Cross,  whose  name,  I  verily  believe, 
must  have  been  Disraeli.  For  aught  I  know,  the 
present  Disraeli  is  descended  from  him;  and  with  the 
impression  that  he  is,  I  now  forgive  the  heir-at-law  of 
the  blasphemous  thief  who  died  upon  the  Cross.'' 
From   the  O'Connell   point    of   view   the   interest 

'  Where,  as  here,  the  premiss  is  inaccurate,  the  insinuation  founded  on  it 
seems  to  do  something  more  than  merely  fail.  But  the  mere  hint  suggests  to 
what  charges  of  venal  hypocrisy  Disraeli  would  have  been  exposed  through- 
out his  life  had  his  own  baptism  been  deferred  until  after  he  had  passed  the 
schoolboy  stage. 

211 


BENJAMIX    DISRAELI 

centers  in  the  line:  ''No  person  ever  yet  was  a 
Christian  who  persecuted" — memorable  in  the  place 
and  time  of  its  utterance.  If  there  was  everything 
about  the  rest  of  the  speech  to  suggest  the  taste 
and  the  temper  that  go  to  make  the  fanatic,  the 
baiter,  and  the  bully,  that  inconsistency  may  be  set 
down  to  what  were  then  held  to  be  the  exigencies  of 
political  controversy.  Nor  need  we  take  it  seriously. 
O'Connell,  too,  no  less  than  Disraeli,  may  be  said  to 
have  shouted — in  his  own  Celtic  fashion.  Between 
the  two  men  there  had  been  some  personal  courtesies. 
A  year  earlier  the  neophyte,  after  dining  with  the 
Liberator,  had  written:  '"I  have  had  three  interviews 
of  late  with  three  remarkable  men — O'Connell,  Beck- 
ford,  and  Lord  Durham.  The  first  is  the  man  of  the 
greatest  genius;  the  second  of  the  greatest  taste;  and 
the  last  of  the  greatest  ambition."  Even  at  Taunton, 
Disraeli  had  prefaced  his  "bloody  hand"  strictures  by 
saying:  "I  am  myself  O'Connell's  admirer,  so  far  as 
his  talents  and  abilities  are  concerned."  Faced  now 
by  the  virulent  personal  onslaught  which  was  to  be 
the  test  of  his  mettle,  Disraeli  sent  a  challenge  to 
O'Connell.  The  sequel  is  well  known.  O'ConnelFs 
conscience,  which  should  certainly,  with  this  contin- 
gency in  view,  have  been  tenderer  in  affairs  of  the 
tongue,  would  not  allow  him  to  fight — he  had  already 
in  the  duel  with  D'Esterre  killed  his  man.  Morgan 
O'Connell,  M.P.,  the  son,  had,  however,  fought  in  his 
father's  behalf  with  Lord  Alvanley,  and  to  hini  there- 
fore Disraeli  wrote: 


212 


THE   SCRAIMHLE   FOR   A    SEAT 

"  3lA  Park  Stuekt,  GjiosvKNOR  Squarb, 
•'  Tuesday,  May  otft,   1835. 

"Sir:  As  you  have  established  yourself  as  the 
champion  of  your  father,  I  have  the  honor  to  request 
your  notice  to  a  very  scurrilous  attack  which  your 
father  has  made  upon  my  conduct  and  character. 

"Had  ^Ir.  O'Connell,  according  to  the  practise  ob- 
served among  gentlemen,  appealed  to  me  respecting 
the  accuracy  of  the  reported  expressions  before  he  in- 
dulged in  offensive  comments  upon  them,  he  would, 
if  he  can  be  influenced  by  a  sense  of  justice,  have  felt 
that  such  comments  were  unnecessary.  He  has  not 
thought  fit  to  do  so,  and  he  leaves  me  no  alternative 
but  to  request  that  you,  as  his  son,  will  resume  your 
vicarious  duties  of  yielding  satisfaction  for  the  in- 
sults which  your  father  has  too  long  lavished  w^ith 
impunity  on  his  political  opponents. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  your  obedient  servaiatt, 

"B.  Disraeli.'' 

O'Connell  the  younger  replied  (in  a  letter  earned 
by  Mr.  French)  that  while  he  would  not  allow  other 
people  to  insult  his  father,  he  did  not  hold  himself 
accountable  for  any  insult  his  father  might  put  upon 
others.  Lord  Alvanley's  offense,  for  instance,  had 
been  the  calling  of  a  meeting  at  Brooks's  Club,  of 
wiiich  both  were  members,  to  consider  O'Connell's 
conduct  in  abusing  Lord  Alvanley  as  a  "bloated 
buffoon.''  Though  this  explanation  was  no  direct  in- 
citement to  Disraeli  to  insult  O'Connell  the  elder,  Dis- 
raeli may  be  excused  for  so  considering  it,  at  least 
for  so  handling  it.  He  sent  a  second  note  to  O'Connell 
the  younger: 

213 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"  3lA  Park  Street,  Grosveivor  Square, 

"  Tuesday,  May  5th. 

"Sir:  I  have  the  honor  to  acknowledge  the  receipt 
of  your  letter,  delivered  to  me  by  Mr,  Fitzstephen 
French,  by  which  I  learn  that  you  do  not  consider 
yourself  'answerable  for  what  your  father  may  say.' 

"With  regard  to  your  request  that  I  should  with- 
draw my  letter,  because  its  character  is  insulting  to 
yourself,  I  have  to  observe  that  it  is  not  in  my  power 
to  withdraw  the  letter,  which  states  the  reason  of 
my  application;  but  I  have  no  hesitation  in  assuring 
you  that  I  did  not  intend  that  it  should  convey  to  you 
any  personal  insult. 

"I  have  the  honor,  etc., 

"B.  Disraeli." 

No  reply  came;  but  Disraeli,  in  the  interval  of 
waiting,  was  sharpening  his  pen  for  a  lengthy  indict- 
ment of  the  Irish  leader.^ 

To  Mr.  Daniel  O'Connell  M.F.  for  Duhlin. 

"Mr.  O'Connell:  Although  you  have  long  placed 
yourself  out  of  the  pale  of  civilization,  still  I  am  one 
who  will  not  be  insulted,  even  by  a  Yahoo,  without 
chastising  it.  When  I  read  this  morning  in  the  same 
journals  your  virulent  attack  upon  myself,  and  that 
your  son  was  at  the  same  moment  paying  the  penalty 

'  An  irrelevant  namesake  of  O'Connell's,  but  not,  as  he  claimed,  a  kinsman, 
addressed  to  Disraeli  the  following  letter  :  "  I  understand  that  you  have  sent 
a  challenge  to  my  illustrious  kinsman,  the  great  Daniel  O'Connell,  well  knoAv- 
ing  that  owing  to  a  solemn  vow  he  could  not  meet  you ;  but  I,  sir,  as  his 
relative,  and  endorsing  every  word  he  has  said  of  you,  am  prepared  to  give 
you  that  satisfaction  which  one  gentleman  owes  to  another,  and  am  ready  to 
meet  you  at  any  time  and  phice  you  name — here,  in  France,  in  Germany,  or 
even  at  the  foot  of  that  mount  where  your  impenitent  ancestor  stiffered  for 
his  crimes."  Even  as  in  a  duel  a  bullet  is  not  always  delivered,  so  we  may 
perhaps  conclude    tliat   tliis   letter,  thougli  composed,  was  never  sent.     Its 

214 


THE   SCRxVMBLE    FOR   A   SEAT 

of  similar  virulence  to  another  individual  on  whom 
you  had  dropped  your  filth,  I  thought  that  the  con- 
sciousness-that  your  opponents  had  at  length  discov- 
ered a  source  of  satisfaction  might  have  animated 
your  insolence  to  unwonted  energy;  and  I  called  upon 
your  son  to  reassume  his  vicarious  office  of  yielding 
satisfaction  for  his  shrinking  sire.  But  it  seems  that 
gentleman  declines  the  further  exercise  of  the  pleas- 
ing dutj'  of  enduring  the  consequences  of  your  liber- 
tine harangues.  I  have  no  other  means,  therefore,  of 
noticing  your  effusion  but  by  this  public  mode. 
Listen,  then,  to  me. 

"■If  it  had  been  possible  for  you  to  act  like  a  gentle- 
man, you  would  have  hesitated  before  you  made  your 
foul  and  insolent  comments  upon  a  hasty  and  garbled 
report  of  a  speech  which  scarcely  contains  a  sentence 
or  an  expression  as  they  emanated  from  my  mouth; 
but  the  truth  is,  you  were  glad  to  seize  the  first  op- 
portunity of  pouring  forth  your  venom  against  a  man 
whom  it  serves  the  interests  of  your  party  to  represent 
as  a  political  apostate.  In  1831,  when  Mr.  O'Connell 
expressed  to  the  electors  of  Wycombe  his  anxiety  to 
assist  me  in  my  election,  I  came  forward  as  the  oppo- 
nent of  the  party  in  power,  w-hich  I  described  in  my 
address  as  'a  rapacious,  tyrannical,  and  incapable 
faction' — the  English  Whigs,  who  in  the  ensuing  year 
denounced  you  as  a  traitor  from  the  throne,  and  every 
one  of  whom  only  a  few  months  back  you  have  anath- 
ematized with  all  the  peculiar  graces  of  a  tongue 
practised  in  scurrility.  You  are  the  patron  of  these 
men  now,  Mr.  O'Connell;  you,  forsooth,  are  ^devoted' 

writer,  who  went  by  the  nickname  of  Lord  Kilmallock,  was  once  introduced 
by  O'Connell  the  younger  as  "my  friend  Mr.  O'Connell."  "My  kinsman, 
your  father  would  have  said,"  pleaded  the  namesake.  "  My  father's  vanity," 
said  Morgan  O'Connell.  That  touch  of  a  Disraelian  humor  does  seem  to 
make  "  all  the  O'Connells  "  of  his  kin. 

215 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

to  them.  I  am  still  their  uncompromising  opponent. 
Which  of  us  is  the  most  consistent? 

"You  say  that  I  was  once  a  Radical,  and  am  now 
a  Tory.  My  conscience  acquits  me  of  ever  having  de- 
serted a  political  friend,  or  having  changed  a  polit- 
ical opinion.  I  worked  for  a  great  and  avowed  end 
in  1831,  and  that  was  the  restoration  of  the  balance 
of  parties  in  the  State:  a  result  which  I  believed  to 
be  necessary  to  the  honor  of  the  realm,  and  the  hap- 
piness of  the  people.  I  never  advocated  a  measure 
which  I  did  not  believe  tended  to  this  result;  and  if 
there  be  any  measures  which  I  then  urged,  and  now 
am  not  disposed  to  press,  it  is  because  that  great 
result  is  obtained. 

"In  1831  I  should  have  been  very  happy  to  have 
labored  for  this  object  with  Mr.  O'Connell,  with  whom 
I  had  no  political  acquaintance,  but  who  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Legislature,  remarkable  for  his  political 
influence,  his  versatile  talents,  and  his  intense  hatred 
and  undisguised  contempt  of  the  Whigs.  Since  1831 
we  have  met  only  once,  but  I  have  a  lively  recollection 
of  my  interview  with  so  distinguished  a  personage. 
Our  conversation  was  of  great  length,  and  I  had  a 
very  ample  opportunity  of  studying  your  character. 
I  thought  you  a  very  amusing,  a  very  interesting,  and 
a  somewhat  overrated  man.  I  am  sure  on  that  occa- 
sion I  did  not  disguise  from  you  my  political  views; 
I  spoke  with  a  frankness  which,  I  believe,  is  character- 
istic of  my  disposition,  I  told  you  I  was  not  a  senti- 
mental, but  a  practical  politician;  that  which  I  chiefly 
desired  to  see,  was  the  formation  of  a  strong  but 
constitutional  government  that  would  maintain  the 
empire;  and  that  I  thought  if  the  Whigs  remained 
in  office  they  would  shipwreck  the  State.  I  observed 
then,  as  was  my  habit,  that  the  W^higs  must  be  got 
rid  of  at  any  price.     It  seemed  to  me  that  you  were 

216 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

much  of  the  same  opinion  as  myself,  but  oiir  conversa- 
tion was  very  general.  We  formed  no  political  alli- 
ance, and  for  a  simple  reason.  I  concealed  neither 
from  yourself  nor  from  your  friends  that  the  re- 
peal of  the  Union  was  an  impassable  gulf  between 
us,  and  that  I  could  not  comprehend,  after  the  an- 
nouncement of  such  an  intention,  how  any  English 
party  could  cooperate  with  you.  Probably  you  then 
thought  that  the  English  movement  might  confed- 
ernte  with  you  on  a  system  of  mutual  assistance,  and 
that  you  might  exchange  and  circulate  your  accom- 
modation measures  of  destruction;  but  even  Mr. 
O'Connell,  with  his  lively  faith  in  Whig  feebleness 
and  Whig  dishonesty,  could  scarcely  have  imagined 
that,  in  the  course  of  twelve  months,  his  fellow-con- 
spirators were  to  be  my  Lord  Melbourne  and  the 
Marquis  of  Lansdowne.  I  admire  your  scurrilous 
allusions  to  my  origin.  It  is  quite  clear  that  the 
'hereditary  bondsman'  has  already  forgotten  the 
clank  of  his  fetters.  I  know  the  tactics  of  your 
Church;  it  clamors  for  toleration,  and  it  labors  for 
supremacy.  I  see  that  you  are  quite  prepared  to  per- 
secute. 

"With  regard  to  your  taunts  as  to  my  want  of  suc- 
cess in  my  election  contests,  permit  me  to  remind  you 
that  I  had  nothing  to  appeal  to  but  the  good  sense 
of  the  people.  No  threatening  skeletons  canvassed 
for  me;  a  death's-head  and  cross-bones  was  not 
blazoned  on  my  banners.  My  pecuniary  resources, 
too,  were  limited.  I  am  not  one  of  those  public  beg- 
gars that  we  see  swarming  Avith  their  obtrusive  boxes 
in  the  chapels  of  your  creed;  nor  am  I  in  possession 
of  a  princely  revenue  arising  from  a  starving  race  of 
fanatical  slaves.  Nevertheless,  I  have  a  deep  con- 
viction that  the  hour  is  at  hand  when  I  shall  be  more 
successful,  and  take  my  place  in  that  proud  assembly 

217 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

of  which  Mr.  O'Connell  avows  his  wish  to  be  no  longer 
a  member.  I  expect  to  be  a  representative  of  the 
people  before  the  repeal  of  the  Union.  We  shall  meet 
at  Philippi;  and  rest  assured  that,  confiding  in  a  good 
cause,  and  in  some  energies  which  have  not  been  al- 
together unimproved,  I  will  seize  the  first  oppor- 
tunity of  inflicting  upon  you  a  castigation  which  will 
make  you  at  the  same  time  remember  and  repent  the 
insults  that  you  have  lavished  upon 

"Benjamin  Disraeli."  • 

The  deliberation  of  his  periods  indicates  a  certain 
pleasure  in  them,  enough,  one  hopes,  to  compensate 
the  writer  for  the  rank  unreason  of  the  whole  epi- 
sode.^ The  challenge  to  Morgan  O'Connell  was  sent 
on  May  5th.    On  the  next  day  he  wrote  to  his  sister: 

"I  send  you  the  Timpf<  and  Morning  Post.  There 
is  but  one  opinion  among  all  parties — viz.,  that  I  have 
squabashed  them.  I  went  to  D'Orsay  immediately. 
He  sent  for  Henry  Baillie  for  my  second,  as  he 
thought  a  foreigner  should  not  interfere  in  a  political 
duel;  but  he  took  the  management  of  everything.  I 
never  quitted  his  house  till  ten  o'clock,  when  I  dressed 
and  went  to  the  opera,  and  every  one  says  I  have  done 
it  in  first-rate  style." 

Never  was  so  light-hearted  a  protagonist  amid 
issues  of  Hf<'  mul  death.     The  enemy  was  not  drawn; 

'  Wliatever  plso  tlmy  are,  T  can  not  regard  these  letters  as  those  of  a  man 
passing  through  "  a  paroxysm  of  rage,  humiliation,  and  despair,"  or  "  a  fnry 
that  had  for  a  moment  hereft  him  of  sense."  Mr.  O'Connor,  when  he  formed 
that  opinion,  had  not  before  him  tliose  "Home  Letters  "  which  must  have 
made  the  mitigating  difference  in  so  much  of  his  count  against  Disraeli's  early 
days. 

218 


THE   SCRAMBLE    FOR   A    SEAT 

and  three  days  later  the  future  Prime  Minister  of 
England  was  arraigned  in  a  police  court. 

"This  morning,  as  I  was  lying  in  bed,  thankful  that 
I  had  kicked  all  the  O'Connells  and  that  1  was  at 
length  to  have  a  quiet  morning,  Mr.  Collard,  the  police 
officer  of  Marylebone,  rushed  into  my  chamber  and 
took  me  into  custody.     In  about  an  hour  and  a  half, 

being  dressed  (having  previously  sent  to  S ),  we 

all  went  in  a  hackney  coach  to  the  office,  where  I 
found  that  the  articles  were  presented  by  a  Mr.  Ben- 
nett, residing  in  some  street  in  Westminster,  and  an 
acquaintance  of  the  O'Connells.  We  were  soon  dis- 
missed, but  I  am  now  bound  to  keep  the  peace  in 
£500  sureties.  As  far  as  the  present  affair  was  con- 
cerned, it  was  a  most  unnecessary  precaution,  as  if 
all  the  O'Connells  were  to  challenge  me,  I  could  not 
think  of  meeting  them  now.  I  consider,  and  every  one 
else,  that  they  are  lynched." 

Perhaps  the  most  mortifyiflg  thing  of  all  to  Dis- 
raeli was  the  hesitation  which  his  people  at  home  felt 
in  approving  a  correspondence  and  a  combat  of  the 
kind. 

"It  is  very  easy  for  you  to  criticize,"  he  says,  with- 
out any  resentment,  "but  I  do  not  regret  the  letter: 
the  expressions  were  well  weighed,  and  without  it  the 
affair  was  but  clever  pamphleteering.  Critics  you 
must  always  meet.  W.  told  me  the  last  letter  was 
the  finest  thing  in  the  English  language,  but  that  the 
letter  to  Dan  was  too  lomj;  others  think  that  perfect. 
One  does  not  like  the  Yahoo,  as  coarse;  others  think  it 
worthy  of  Swift,  and  so  on.  The  general  effect  is  the 
thing,  and  that  is,  that  all  men  agree  I  have  shown 
pluck." 

219 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

They,  in  the  placid  back-waters  of  Bradenham,  as 
we  in  wider  seas  of  life,  may  lift  up  wondering  eyes 
and  deprecating  hands  before  this  foam  of  words. 
But  if  they  lived  long  enough  to  look  back  and  to  say 
that  Disraeli  knew,  so  may  we  say  it.  Certain  it  is 
that  an  attempt  was  then  made  to  crush  Disraeli — 
the  audacious  man  with  the  audacious  name,  in  itself 
almost  provocative  to  a  horsewhip,  if  not  a  rack;  a 
man  audaciously  dressed  and  w^ith  an  impertinent 
pertinence  in  his  naming  of  political  things  to  the  re- 
jection of  the  usual  shibboleths:  w^ho,  moreover,  had 
written  a  book,  not  so  good  as  this  person's  and  that, 
but  far  more  widely  read.  He  had  not  the  passwords, 
and  he  must  perish.  Here,  at  any  rate,  the  Whigs  and 
O'Connell  could  foregather,  with  "compact"  and  with 
"treaty,"  and  nobody  feel  compromised  or  annoyed. 
Across  his  political  tomb  they  could  grasp  hands, 
proudly  bloody  at  last-.  Disraeli  stood  alone;  he  must 
so  comport  himself  that  he  could  not  be  left  long  in 
that  forlorn  minority  of  one.  The  offense  which 
called  forth  O'Connell's  simulation  of  moral  indigna- 
tion was  no  offense  at  all,  seen  now  by  those  who  look 
back  calmly  from  peaks  which  Disraeli  anticipatingly 
scaled;  and,  what  is  more — let  us  have  done  with  cant 
— the  men  in  that  melee  did  not  want  to  see  clearly; 
they  did  not  mean  to  be  convinced  by  anj'thing  Dis- 
raeli might  say.  For  this  purpose,  then,  it  was  even 
more  important  to  show  them  that  he  was  insensitive 
than  to  show  them  that  he  was  right.  Had  he  flinched 
an  eyelash,  he  had  given  himself  over  to  the  enemy. 
If  there  is  no  sweetness  (save  his  sister's)  to  be  read 

220 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

into  or  between  these  lines,  and  assuredly  no  beauty, 
there  is,  at  any  rate,  an  ascertained  strength — that 
courage  to  face  a  bully,  or  any  number  of  bullies,  in 
which  Disraeli,  despite  a  nervous  organism,  showed 
himself  not  once  deficient  from  first  to  last.  And  Dis- 
raeli continued  to  feel  elation  over  this  O'Connell  pen- 
bludgeoning  of  his: 

"There  is  a  gentleman  opposite,"  he  said  at  Maid- 
stone in  1837,  "who  seems  proud  of  O'Connell's  name. 
I  can  assure  him  there  is  none  he  could  mention  which 
makes  me  feel  more  proud;  for,  standing  alone,  I 
cowed  the  rufiian  and  his  race." 

A  few  weeks  later,  when  Disraeli  met  O'Connell  at 
Philippi,  one  likes  to  hope  that  the  Irish  leader  did 
not,  on  that  occasion,  lead  his  followers  in  the  outcry 
that  drowned  Disraeli's  first  speech;  but,  after  all, 
it  is  hoping  that  O'Connell  was  more  than  human. 
Yet  great  men  are  great  in  their  impulses,  even  as 
toward  scorn,  so  also  toward  generosity.  Apyway, 
if  O'Connell's  memory  for  an  affront,  real  or  supposed, 
was  long,  even  as  his  race's  for  an  injury,  Disraeli's 
was  short,  as  haply  became  a  son  of  fathers  who  had 
perforce  to  make  swift  peace  with  the  persecutor. 
Knowing  him,  we  expect  his  later  allusions  to  O'Con- 
nell to  be  fair  and  even  friendly;  and  in  that  expecta- 
tion we  are  not  disappointed. 

If  Disraeli  devoted  to  the  O'Connell  episode  a  dis- 
proportionate attention  and  vocabulary,  we,  who 
read  now,  may  in  turn  give  disproportionate  im- 
portance to  Disraeli's  part  in  it.    Only  two  days  suf- 

221 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ficed  for  this  first  round — two  days  in  which  the  com- 
mon routine  of  life's  labor  was  duly  done.  When,  at 
the  close  of  the  initiatory  hostilities,  Disraeli  said 
that  every  one  thought  he  had  triumphed,  he  meant 
the  "every  one"  whose  opinion  mattered  to  him.  In 
the  Globe,  then  a  Whig  organ,  a  different  estimate  was 
made.  At  the  end  of  the  year  (1835)  the  old  charges 
about  the  Eadical  candidature  at  Wycombe  were  re- 
newed in  the  course  of  a  review  of  Disraeli's  Vindica- 
tion of  the  English  Constitution,  and  when  he  made  a 
reply  only  a  mutilated  passage  of  it  was  printed.  It 
was  this: 

"Your  assertions  that  I  applied  to  O'Connell  to  re- 
turn me  to  Parliament,  and  that  he  treated  that  appli- 
cation with  irreverent  and  undisguised  contempt,  are 
quite  untrue.  I  never  made  any  application  to  Mr. 
O'Connell  to  return  me  to  Parliament;  and  the  only 
time  I  ever  met  Mr.  O'Connell,  which  was  in  society, 
he  treated  me  with  a  courtesy  which  I  trust  I  re- 
turned." 

The  Glohe,  wrong  alike  in  large  things  and  small, 
in  its  attribution  of  Radicalism,  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  term,  to  Disraeli,  and  in  its  mistaking  Bulwer's 
application  to  O'Connell  as  Disraeli's  own,  had  no 
word  of  apology.  That  it  had  made  the  same  asser- 
tions months  before  without  contradiction  was  put 
forward  as  a  justification  for  disinterring  the  old 
calumny;  and  O'Connell's  version  in  his  Dublin 
speech,  the  inaccuracy  of  which  could  have  been 
demonstrated  by  the  least  show  of  inquiry,  was  re- 
produced.    Disraeli,  who  was  thus,  at  the  outset,  to 

222 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

exhaust  his  interest  in  nailinjij  to  the  counter  the  false 
coinage  in  circulation  with  his  superscription,  and 
who  early  learned  the  error  of  devoting  to  an  evening 
paper  the  energies  that  were  meant  for  mankind, 
thereupon  addressed  to  the  Times  the  following  letter, 
containing  incidentally  a  statement  of  the  political 
faith  in  him: 

To  the  Editor  of  the  ''Times:' 

"December  26th,  1835. 

"Sir:  The  editor  of  the  Globe,  in  his  paper  of  Fri- 
day, stated  that  I  had  applied  to  Mr.  O'Connell  to 
return  me  to  Parliament  as  a  joint  of  his  tail,  which 
is  an  utter  falsehood,  and  substantiated  his  assertion 
by  a  pretended  quotation  from  my  letter  in  inverted 
commas,  which  is  a  complete  forgery.  I  called  the 
attention  of  the  editor  of  the  Globe  to  these  circum- 
stances in  courteous  language,  and  the  editor  of  the 
Globe  inserted  my  letter  in  his  columns,  suppressing 
the  very  paragraph  which  affected  his  credit. 

"The  editor  of  the  Globe,  accused  of  a  falsehood 
and  convicted  of  a  forgery,  takes  refuge  in  silly  in- 
solence. It  tosses  its  head  with  all  the  fluttering 
indignation  and  affected  scorn  of  an  enraged  and 
supercilious  waiting-woman.  It  is  the  little  Duke  of 
Modena  of  the  press,  and  would  rule  Europe  with  its 
scepter  of  straw,  and  declare  a  general  war  by  the 
squeak  of  a  penny  trumpet.  But  its  majestic  stalk 
turns  out  to  be  only  a  waddle,  and  its  awful  menace 
a  mere  hiss.  As  for  'breaking  butterflies  on  a  wheel,' 
this  is  the  stock  simile  of  the  Globe,  an  image  almost 
as  original  as  the  phoenix,  and  [one]  which,  I  have 
invariably  observed  in  controversy,  is  the  last  des- 
perate resource  of  confuted  commonplace  and  irri- 
tated imbecility. 

223 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"An  anonymous  writer  should,  at  least,  display 
power.  When  Jupiter  hurls  a  thunderbolt,  it  may  be 
mercy  in  the  god  to  veil  his  glory  with  a  cloud;  but 
we  can  only  view  with  feelings  of  contemptuous 
lenity  the  mischievous  varlet  who  pelts  us  with  mud 
as  we  are  riding  by,  and  then  hides  behind  a  dust- 
hole.  The  editor  of  the  Globe,  I  am  assured,  has 
adopted  the  great  Scipio  Africanus  for  his  illustrious 
model.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  his  Latin  is  more  com- 
plete than  his  English,  and  that  he  will  not  venture 
to  arrest  the  attention  of  admiring  senates  in  a  jargon 
which  felicitously  combines  the  chatter  of  Downing 
Street  with  the  bluster  of  the  Strand. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  remain,  sir,  your  very  obe- 
dient servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 


The  Glohe  carried  on  the  war  of  words.  "Our 
tenderness  toward  volatile  insects  disinclines  us  to 
break  a  butterfly  on  a  wheel  oftener  than  necessary." 
A  little  of  this  sort  of  badinage  goes  a  long  way — • 
and  a  short  one.  Yet  there  is  a  little  sentence  that 
illustrates — what  we  all  desire — the  happening  of  the 
unlikely.  "Fifty  years  hence,"  said  the  Glohe,  "Mr. 
Disraeli  and  we  shall,  we  trust,  be  better  friends; 
though,  by  the  way,  his  sanguine  prospect  of  attain- 
ing that  period  convinces  us  that  he  is,  as  we  sup- 
posed, not  only  the  younger,  but  the  youngest  of  the 
Disraelis."  Disraeli  did  not  quite  live  to  see  the 
fulfilment  of  the  prediction  made  thus  in  scorn.  But 
lie  lived  long  enough  to  read,  with  a  pleasure  made 
piquant  by  past  hostilities,  articles  in  praise  of  him- 
self and   his   policy  in  the  evening  newspaper  that 

224 


THE   SCRA.MBLE   FOIl   A   SEAT 

blushed  permanently  pink  in  memory  of  those  early 
indiscretions.  The  term  *'fifty  years"  seems  almost 
fateful  when  we  meet  it  again  in  the  Glohc  in  one  of 
its  issues  in  the  year  1868:  "If  Mr.  Disraeli  would 
enter  the  Chamber  of  Peers  he  would  take  his  seat 
with  a  better  right  to  honor  than  any  man  who  has 
been  elevated  during  the  last  half-century." 

Meanwhile,  Disraeli  had  to  begin  the  year  1836 
with  another  Globe  encounter,  illustrating  only  too 
patently  what  he  had  earlier  called  in  a  letter  to 
Bulwer  (published  on  another  page)  "all  the  coarse 
vulgarity  of  our  political  controversies." 

To  the  Editor  of  the  ''Tunes:' 

"December  28th,  1835. 

"Sir:  I  have  often  observed  that  there  are  two 
kinds  of  nonsense — high  nonsense  and  low  nonsense. 
When  a  man  makes  solemn  accusations  which  he  can 
not  prove,  quotes  documents  which  are  not  in  ex- 
istence, affects  a  contempt  which  he  can  not  feel,  and 
talks  of  'breaking  butterflies  on  a  wheel,'  I  call  this 
high  nonsense.  When  the  same  individual,  in  the 
course  of  four-and-twenty  hours,  writhing  under  a 
castigation  which  he  has  himself  provoked,  and  which 
he  will  never  forget,  utters  at  the  same  time  half  an 
apology  and  half  a  sniveling  menace,  and  crowns  a 
rigmarole  detail  which  only  proves  his  own  incapacity 
of  reasoning  b^'  a  swaggering  murmur  of  indiiference 
worthy  of  Bodadil  after  a  beating,  I  call  this  low  non- 
sense. The  editor  of  the  Glohe  is  a  consummate  master 
of  both  species  of  silliness.  Whether  the  writer  of  the 
articles  of  the  Glohe^  be  a  member  of  Parliament,  as 
is  formally  asserted  every  week  by  a  journal  of  great 

» The  writer  was  Charles  Duller,  M.P. 

16  225 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

circulation,  and  has  never  been  contradicted,  or 
whether  he  be  a  poor  devil  who  is  paid  for  his  libel 
by  the  line,  is  to  me  a  matter  of  perfect  indifference. 
The  thing  who  concocts  the  meager  sentences,  and 
drivels  out  the  rheumy  rhetoric  of  the  Globe,  may  in 
these  queer  times  be  a  senator,  or  he  may  not;  all  I 
know  is,  if  the  Whigs  can  not  find  a  more  puissant 
champion  to  attack  me  than  the  one  they  have  already 
employed,  I  pity  them.  Their  state  is  more  forlorn 
than  ever  I  imagined.  They  are  now  in  much  the  same 
situation  as  the  good  Lady  Bellenden  with  her  well- 
accoutered  cavalier;  at  the  first  charge  he  proves, 
after  all,  only  to  be  Goose  Gibbie.  I  will  not  say,  with 
Macbeth,  that  I  shall  fall  by  'none  of  woman  born,'  but 
this  I  will  declare,  that  the  Whig  Samson  shall  never 
silence  me  by  'the  jaw  of  an  ass.'  The  editor  of  the 
Globe  talks,  sir,  of  our  united  thunder;  I  can  not  com- 
pliment him,  and  all  his  members  of  Parliament,  even 
on  a  single  flash  of  lightning.  On  Friday,  indeed, 
there  was  a  sort  of  sparkish  movement  in  his  lucubra- 
tions, which  faintly  reminded  me  of  the  frisky  bril- 
liancy of  an  expiring  squib;  but  on  Monday  he  was 
as  flat  and  as  obscure  as  an  Essex  marsh,  unillumined 
by  the  presence  of  even  a  single  iguis  fatnns. 

"I  did  not  enter  into  a  controversy  with  the  editor 
of  the  Glohe  with  the  inglorious  ambition  of  unhorsing 
a  few  Whig  scribblers — these  are  indeed  'small  deer,' 
but  because  I  thought  there  was  a  fair  chance  of 
drawing  our  gobemouche  into  making  a  specific  accu- 
sation, which  I  have  long  desired,  and  of  ridding  my- 
self of  those  base  innuendoes  and  those  cowardly  sur- 
mises with  which  the  most  gallant  can  not  engage, 
and  which  the  most  skilful  can  not  conquer.  The 
editor  of  the  Glohe  has  realized  my  most  sanguine 
expectations.  Like  all  vulgar  minds,  he  mistook 
courtesy  for  apprehension,  and,  flushed  and  bloated 

226 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

with  the  iiutiripiited  triumph  of  a  dull  bully,  he  per- 
mitted me  by  his  base  suppression  to  appeal  to  your 
ready  sense  of  justice,  and  thus  has  afforded  me  an 
opportunity  of  setting  this  question  at  rest  for  ever. 

"It  turus  out  that  the  sole  authority  of  the  Globe 
for  its  bold  and  detailed  assertions  is  Mr.  O'Connell's 
speech  at  Dublin,  which  the  editor  declares  that  I 
have  never  answered.  I  thought  my  answer  to  Mr. 
O'Connell  was  sufficiently  notorious;  I  believe  it  is 
universally  acknowledged,  among  all  honest  folks, 
that  Mr.  O'Connell,  as  is  his  custom,  has  the  baseness 
first  to  libel  me,  and  then  to  skulk  from  the  conse- 
quences of  his  calumny.  However,  to  put  the  Globe 
out  of  court  on  this  head,  I  here  declare  that  every 
letter  of  every  syllable  of  the  paragraph  quoted  in  its 
columns  from  Mr.  O'Connell's  speech  is  an  unadul- 
terated falsehood — from  my  novels,  which  the  de  facto 
member  for  Dublin  learnedly  informs  us  are  styled 
The  Curiosities  of  Literature,  to  his  letter  to  me,  which 
was  never  written,  and  which  he  assures  us  was 
lithographed  throughout  Wycombe. 

"I  asserted  in  the  Globe  that  I  professed  at  this 
moment  precisely  the  same  political  creed  as  on  the 
hustings  of  Wycombe.  I  am  prepared  to  prove  this 
assertion,  I  was  absent  from  England  during  the  dis- 
cussions on  the  Keform  Bill.  The  bill  was  virtually, 
though  not  formally,  passed  when  I  returned  to  my 
country  in  the  spring  of  1832.  Far  from  that  scene 
of  discord  and  dissension,  unconnected  with  its 
parties,  and  untouchcMl  by  its  passions,  viewing,  as  a 
whole,  what  all  had  witnessed  only  in  the  fiery  pas- 
sage of  its  intense  and  alarming  details,  events  have 
proved,  with  all  humility  be  it  spoken,  that  the  opin- 
ion I  formed  of  that  measure  on  my  arrival  was  more 
correct  than  the  one  commonly  adopted.  I  found  the 
nation  in  terror  of  a  rampant  democracy.    I  saw  only 

227 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

an  impending  oligarchy.  I  found  the  House  of  Com- 
mons packed,  and  the  independence  of  the  House  of 
Lords  announced  as  terminated.  I  recognized  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  same  oligarchical  coups  d/etat  from  which 
we  had  escaped  by  a  miracle  little  more  than  a  cen- 
tury before;  therefore  I  determined  to  the  utmost  of 
my  power  to  oppose  the  Whigs. 

"Why  then,  it  may  be  asked,  did  I  not  join  the 
Tories?  Because  I  found  the  Tories  in  a  state  of 
stupefaction.  The  Whigs  had  assured  them  that  they 
were  annihilated,  and  they  believed  them.  They  had 
not  a  single  definite  or  intelligible  idea  as  to  their 
position  or  their  duties,  or  the  character  of  their 
party.  They  were  haunted  with  a  nervous  apprehen- 
sion of  that  great  bugbear  ^the  People,'  that  bewilder- 
ing title  under  which  a  miserable  minority  contrives 
to  coerce  and  plunder  a  nation.  They  were  ignorant 
that  the  millions  of  that  nation  required  to  be  guided 
and  encouraged,  and  that  they  were  that  nation's 
natural  leaders,  bound  to  marshal  and  to  enlighten 
them.  The  Tories  trembled  at  a  coming  anarchy; 
what  they  had  to  apprehend  was  a  rigid  tyranny. 
They  fancied  themselves  on  the  eve  of  a  reign  of  ter- 
ror, w^hen  they  were  about  to  sink  under  the  sover- 
eignty of  a  Council  of  Ten.  Even  that  illustrious  man 
who,  after  conquering  the  Peninsula,  ought  to  deem 
nothing  impossible,  announced  that  the  King's  Gov- 
ernment could  not  be  carried  on.  The  Tories  in  1832 
were  avowedly  no  longer  a  practical  party;  they  had 
no  system  and  no  object;  they  were  passive  and  for- 
lorn. They  took  their  seats  in  the  House  of  Commons 
after  the  Reform  Act  as  the  Senate  in  the  Forum, 
when  the  city  was  entered  by  the  Gauls — only  to  die. 

"I  did  not  require  Mr.  O'Connell's  recommenda- 
tion, or  that  of  any  one  else,  for  the  borough  the 
suffrages  of  whose  electors  I  had  the  honor  to  solicit. 

228 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

My  family  resided  iu  the  iieigiiboi'liood.  I  stood  alike 
on  liM-al  intiueuce  aud  distinctly  avowed  principles, 
and  1  opposed  the  son  of  the  Prime  Alinister.  At  the 
tirst  meeting  of  the  electors  I  developed  those  views 
which  I  have  since  taken  every  opportunity  to  ex- 
press, and  which  are  fully  detailed  in  my  recent  letter 
to  Lord  Lyndhurst.  Opposition  to  the  Whigs  at  all 
hazards,  and  the  necessity  of  the  Tories  placing  them- 
selves at  the  head  of  the  nation,  were  the  two  texts  on 
which  I  preached,  and  to  which  I  ever  recurred;  the 
same  doctrines  are  laid  down  in  my  letter  to  the  elect- 
ors of  Mar3lebone,  The  consequence  of  this  address 
was,  that  all  the  Tories  of  the  town,  aud  all  those 
voters  who  were  not  Whigs,  but  who  from  a  confusion 
of  ideas  were  called  Radicals,  offered  me  their  sup- 
port. Did  this  gratifying  result  prove  my  inconsist- 
ency? I  think  I  may  assert  it  only  proved  the  justness 
of  my  views  and  the  soundness  of  my  arguments.  If 
the  Tories  and  Iladicals  of  England  had  united,  like 
the  Tories  and  Radicals  of  Wycombe,  four  years  ago, 
the  oligarchical  party  would  long  since  have  been 
crushed;  had  not  the  Tories  and  a  great  portion  of  the 
Radicals  united  at  the  last  general  election,  the  oli- 
garchy would  not  now  have  been  held  in  check.  Five 
years  hence  I  trust  there  will  not  be  a  Radical  in  the 
country;  for  if  a  Radical  mean,  as  it  can  only  mean, 
one  desirous  to  uproot  the  institutions  of  the  country, 
that  is  tlie  exact  definition  of  a  Whig, 

"My  opinions  were  specifically  expressed  in  my 
subsequent  address  to  the  electors.  I  believe,  sir,  it 
has  appeared  in  your  columns.  I  called  upon  the 
electors  to  support  me  in  a  contest  with  a  rapacious, 
tyrannical,  and  incapable  faction,  hostile  alike  to  the 
liberties  of  the  subject  and  the  institutions  of  the 
country. 

"And  now,  sir,  for  Mr.  O'Connell.     Mr.  O'Connell, 

229 


BENJAMIX    DISRAELI 

in  1832,  was  in  a  very  different  situation  to  Mr.  O'Con- 
nell  in  1835.  Tlie  (Jlohe,  wliicli  liistorically  informs  us 
that  in  1832  I  was  to  become  a  member  of  Mr.  O'Con- 
nell's  tail,  forgets  tliat  at  tliat  period  Mr.  O'Connell 
had  no  tail,  for  this  was  previous  to  the  first  general 
election  after  the  Eeform  Act.  Mr.  O'Connell  was 
not  then  an  advocate  for  the  dismemberment  of  the 
empire,  the  destruction  of  the  Church,  and  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  House  of  Lords.  His  lips  overflowed  with 
patriotism,  with  almost  a  Protestant  devotion  to  the 
Establishment,  w^ith  almost  English  admiration  of 
the  constitution.  Our  contest  at  Wycombe  was  a 
very  warm  one;  every  vote  was  an  object.  A  friend 
of  mine,  interested  in  my  success,  knowing  that  I  was 
supported  by  that  portion  of  the  constituency^  styled 
Radicals,  applied  to  Mr.  O'Connell  and  Mr.  Hume, 
with  whom  he  was  intimately  acquainted,  to  know 
whether  they  had  any  influence  in  Wycombe,  and  re- 
quested them  to  exercise  it  in  my  favor.  They  had 
none,  and  they  expressed  their  regret  in  letters  to  this 
gentleman,  who  forwarded  them  to  me  at  Wycombe; 
and  my  committee,  consisting  of  as  many  Tories  as 
Radicals,  printed  them:  this  is  the  history  of  my  con- 
nection with  Mr.  O'Connell. 

"Even  had  it  been  in  the  power  of  Mr.  O'Connell 
and  Mr.  Hume  to  have  interposed  in  my  favor  at  Wy- 
combe, my  political  allegiance  would  not  have  been 
the  expected  consequence  of  their  assistance.  Those 
gentlemen  would  have  aided  me  from  the  principles 
I  professed,  and  the  measures  I  advocated  in  my  ad- 
dress, and  with  a  perfect  acquaintance  of  the  political 
position  which  I  had  assumed.  They  knew,  at  least 
one  of  them,  that  I  had  declined  a  distinct  recom- 
mendation to  another  constituencv,  where  my  return 
would  have  been  secure,  because  I  avowed  my  resolu- 
tion to  enter  the  House  of  Commons  unshackled;  they 


THE   SCRAINIBT.E    FOR   A   SEAT 

were  perfectly  aware  that  the  Tory  party  supported 
me  in  the  borough,  because  some  members  of  the  min- 
istrj^,  pauting  aud  pah',  had  actually  knocked  them 
up  one  night  to  re(iuest  them  to  exert  their  influence 
against  me  on  that  score;  and  they  were  well  ap- 
prised if  I  were  returned  I  should  offer  a  hostility 
without  exception  to  every  measure  proposed  by  the 
Government. 

"The  truth  is,  that  Mr.  Hume  and  Mr.  O'Connell 
already  stood  aloof  from  the  Whigs,  and  the  least 
prescient  might  detect  that  they  already  meditated 
that  furious  opposition  in  which,  in  the  course  of  a 
few  months,  they  had  embarked.  They  were  not 
anxious  to  see  the  Whigs  too  strong;  they  would  not 
have  regretted  to  witness  the  return  of  a  member 
whose  hostility  to  the  administration  was  uncompro- 
mising, particularly  as  they  knew  that  I  was  really 
independent,  totally  unconnected  with  the  Tory 
party,  and  considered  of  importance.  I,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  good  reasons  to  recognize  in  these  gentle- 
men and  their  connections  the  brooding  elements  of 
an  active  opposition — the  seeds  of  a  combination 
which,  in  the  then  state  of  affairs,  I  considered  indis- 
pensable, and  the  only  means  of  salvation  to  the 
country:  and,  had  I  been  returned  to  Parliament  in 
1832,  I  should  have  considered  it  my  duty  to  support 
them  in  most  of  their  measures,  and  especially  their 
hostility  to  the  Coercion  Bill. 

"It  has  been  asserted  that  T  stood  upon  Txadical 
principles.  Why,  then,  did  the  Whigs  oppose  me  as 
a  Tory?  I  challenge  any  one  to  quote  any  speech  I 
have  ever  made,  or  one  line  I  have  ever  written,  hos- 
tile to  the  institutions  of  the  country;  on  the  con- 
trary, I  have  never  omitted  any  opportunity  of 
showing  tliat  on  the  maintenance  of  those  institu- 
tions the  liberties  of  the  nation  depended;  that  if  the 

231 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Crown,  the  Church,  the  House  of  Lords,  the  corpora- 
tions, the  magistracy,  the  poor  laws,  were  success- 
fully attacked,  we  should  fall,  as  once  before  we 
nearly  fell,  under  a  grinding  oligarchy,  and  inevitably 
be  governed  by  a  metropolis.  It  is  true  that  I  avowed 
myself  the  supporter  of  triennial  Parliaments,  and 
for  the  same  reasons  as  Sir  William  Wyndham,  the 
leader  of  the  Tories  against  Walpole — because  the 
House  of  Commons  had  just  been  reconstructed  for 
factious  purposes  by  the  Reform  Act,  as  in  the  earlier 
days  by  the  Septennial  Bill.  I  thought  with  Sir 
William  Wyndham,  whose  speech  I  quoted  to  the 
electors,  that  the  Whig  power  could  only  be  shaken 
by  frequent  elections.  Well,  has  the  result  proved 
the  shallowness  of  my  views?  What  has  shaken  the 
power  of  the  Whigs  to  the  center?  The  general  elec- 
tion of  this  year.  What  will  destroy  the  power  of  the 
Whigs?  The  general  election  of  the  next.  It  is  true 
that  I  avowed  myself  a  supporter  of  the  principle  of 
the  ballot.  Sir  William  Wyndham  did  not  do  this, 
because  in  his  time  the  idea  was  not  in  existence,  but 
he  would,  I  warrant  it,  have  been  as  hearty  a  sup- 
porter of  the  ballot  as  myself,  if,  with  his  principles, 
he  had  been  standing  on  the  hustings  in  the  year  of 
our  Lord  1832,  with  the  third  estate  of  the  realm  re- 
constructed for  factious  purposes  by  the  Whigs,  the 
gentlemen  of  England  excluded  from  their  own 
chamber,  a  number  of  paltry  little  towns  enfranchised 
with  the  privilege  of  returning  as  many  members  of 
Parliament  as  the  shires  of  this  day,  and  the  nomina- 
tion of  these  members  placed  in  a  small  knot  of  hard- 
hearted sectarian  rulers,  opposed  to  everything  noble 
and  national,  and  exercising  an  usurious  influence 
over  the  petty  tradesmen,  Avho  are  their  slaves  and 
their  victims. 

"These  were  the  measures  which,  in  the  desperate 

232 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR  A   SEAT 

state  of  onr  conimonwealtli  Id  1832,  I  thought  might 
yet  preserve  the  liberties  of  this  country,  expecting, 
as  I  did,  to  receive  every  day  a  bulletin  of  a  batch  of 
a  hundred  new  pecn's;  and  that  the  Whigs  of  1832, 
after  having  emulated,  in  regard  to  the  independence 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  the  machinations  of  the 
Whigs  of  1718,  would  be  even  more  successful  than 
their  predecessors  in  their  plots  against  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  House  of  Lords. 

"I  was  unsuccessful  in  my  election.  The  son  of 
the  Prime  Minister  beat  me  by  some  votes  under 
twenty.  The  Whigs  managed  to  get  him  elected  by 
the  influence  of  'a  great  public  principle.'  This  'great 
public  principle'  was  more  intelligible  than  the  one 
which  seated  Mr.  Abercromby  in  his  chair.  My  op- 
ponent was  elected  out  of  'gratitude'  to  Lord  Grey. 
In  future  I  suppose  he  will  be  returned  out  of  'ingrati- 
tude' to  Lord  Grey,  for  that  seems  more  the  fashion 
now. 

"More  than  three  years  after  this  came  my  contest 
at  Taunton  against  the  Master  of  the  Mint,  to  which 
the  editor  of  the  Glohc  has  alluded.  I  came  forward 
on  that  occasion  on  precisely  the  same  principles  on 
which  I  had  offered  myself  at  Wycombe;  but  my  situa- 
tion was  different.  I  was  no  longer  an  independent 
and  isolated  member  of  the  political  world.  I  had  felt 
it  my  duty  to  become  an  earnest  partizan.  The  Tory 
party  had  in  this  interval  roused  itself  from  its 
lethargy;  it  had  profited  by  adversity;  it  had  regained 
not  a  little  of  its  original  character  and  primary 
spirit;  it  had  begun  to  remember,  or  to  discover,  that 
it  wns  the  national  party  of  the  country;  it  recognized 
its  duty  to  place  itself  at  the  head  of  the  nation;  it 
professed  the  patriotic  principle  of  Sir  William 
Wyndham  and  Lord  Bolingbroke,  in  whose  writings 
I  have  ever  recognized  the  most  pure  and  the  pro- 

233 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

foundest  sources  of  political  and  constitutional  wis- 
dom; under  the  guidance  of  an  eloquent  and  able 
leader,  the  principles  of  primitive  Toryism  had  again 
developed  themselves,  and  the  obsolete  associations 
which  form  no  essential  portion  of  that  great  patri- 
otic scheme  had  been  ably  and  effectively  discarded. 
In  the  great  struggle  I  joined  the  party  with  whom 
I  sympathized,  and  continued  to  oppose  the  faction 
to  which  I  had  ever  been  adverse.  But  I  did  not 
avow  my  intention  of  no  longer  supporting  the  ques- 
tions of  short  Parliaments  and  the  ballot,  merely 
because  the  party  to  which  I  had  attached  myself  was 
unfavorable  to  those  measures,  though  that,  in  my 
opinion  as  to  the  discipline  of  political  connections, 
would  have  been  a  sufficient  reason.  I  ceased  to  ad- 
vocate them  because  they  had  ceased  to  be  necessary 
The  purposes  for  which  they  had  been  proposed  were 
obtained.  The  powder  of  the  Whigs  was  reduced  to  a 
wholesome  measure;  the  balance  of  parties  in  the 
State  was  restored;  the  independence  of  the  House  of 
Lords  preserved.  Perpetual  change  in  the  political 
arrangements  of  countries  of  such  a  complicated  civ- 
ilization as  England  is  so  great  an  evil,  that  nothing 
but  a  clear  necessity  can  justify  a  recourse  to  it. 

"The  editor  of  the  Globe  may  not  be  able  to  com- 
prehend these  ideas.  I  am  bound  to  furnish  my  an- 
tagonists with  arguments,  but  not  with  comprehen- 
sion. The  editor  of  the  GJohe  I  take  to  be  one  of  that 
not  inconsiderable  class  of  individuals  ignorant  of 
every  species  and  section  of  human  knowledge.  His 
quavering  remarks  on  my  letter  to  Lord  Lyndhurst 
convince  me  that  he  is  as  ignorant  of  the  history  of 
his  own  country  as  that  of  the  pre-Adamite  sultans. 
The  smile  of  idiot  wonder  with  which  he  learned  for 
the  first  time  that  there  Avere  Tories  in  the  reign  of 
Queen   Anne  could   only  be   commemorated  by  Ho- 

234 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

garth.  For  once  his  pen  seemod  gifted  with  the 
faculty  of  expression,  and  he  has  recorded  in  his  own 
columns  a  lively  memento  of  his  excited  doltishness. 
What  does  it  signify?  His  business  is  to  chalk  the 
walls  of  the  nation  with  praises  of  his  master's  black- 
ing. He  is  worthy  of  his  vocation.  Only  it  is  ludi- 
crous to  see  this  poor  devil  whitewashing  the  barriers 
of  Bayswater  with  the  same  self-complacency  as  if 
he  were  painting  the  halls  of  the  Vatican. 

"The  Whigs  are  now  trying  to  cheer  their  spirits 
by  their  success  in  the  corporation  elections,  as  if  the 
temi)orary  and  inevitable  results  of  personal  and 
local  pique  were  to  be  attributed  to  their  influence. 
How  are  the  mighty  fallen!  Four  years  ago  the 
Whigs  were  packing  a  Parliament;  now  they  are  con- 
tent to  pack  a  town  council.  After  having  nearly  suc- 
ceeded in  ruining  an  empire,  these  gentlemen  flatter 
themselves  that  they  may  still  govern  a  parish. 

''I  am  not  surprised,  and  assuredly  not  terrified, 
by  the  hostility  of  the  Whigs.  They  may  keep  me  out 
of  Parliament,  but  they  can  not  deprive  me  of  one 
means  of  influencing  public  opinion  as  long  as  in  this 
country  there  is  a  free  press;  a  blessing  which,  had 
they  succeeded  in  Louis  Philippizing  the  country,  as 
they  intended,  would  not,  however,  have  long  afforded 
us  its  salutary  protection.  I  feel  that  I  have  darted 
at  least  one  harpoon  in  the  floundering  sides  of  the 
Whig  leviathan.  All  his  roaring  and  all  his  bellow- 
ing, his  foaming  mouth  and  his  lashing  tail,  will  not 
daunt  me.  I  know  it  is  the  roar  of  agony  and  the 
bellow  of  anticipated  annihilation,  the  foam  of  frenzy 
and  the  contortions  of  despair.  I  dared  to  encounter 
the  monster  when  he  was  undoubted  monarch  of  the 
waters,  and  it  would  indeed  be  weakness  to  shrink 
from  a  collision  with  him  now,  in  this  merited  moment 
of  his  awful  and  impending  dissolution. 

235 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"I  have  trespassed,  sir,  too  much  on  your  truly 
valuable  columns,  but  I  am  sensible  of  the  indulgence, 
and  have  the  honor  to  remain,  sir,  your  very  obliged 
and  obedient  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

He  was  in  the  vein;  and  ten  days  later  another 
letter  appeared: 

To  the  Editor  of  the  ''Times:' 

"  January  Sth,  1836. 

"Sir:  I  have  heard  of  a  man  at  Waterloo  who 
contrived  to  fight  on  some  little  time  after  his  head 
was  shot  olf.  This  is  the  precise  situation  of  the  ed- 
itor of  the  (tlohc;  he  continues  writing,  as  the  other 
continued  fighting,  without  any  brains;  but  the  least 
skilful  can  in  a  moment  detect  that  his  lucubration 
of  last  night  is  not  the  result  of  any  intellectual  ex- 
ertion, but  merely  of  a  muscular  motion. 

"After  a  week's  trembling  silence,  the  editor  of 
the  Globe  has  driveled  out  nearly  three  columns  of 
dead  man's  prose,  and,  with  the  aid  of  a  hysterical 
giggle  about  a  misprint  of  a  single  letter  in  my  last 
communication  to  you,  would  fain  persuade  us  he  is 
still  alive.  But  we  all  know  that  the  editor  of  the  Globe 
is  veritably  deceased,  and  this  letter  must  only  be 
considered  as  a  part  of  his  funeral  obsequies. 

"I  need  not  notice  my  ^awful  declaration'  about 
the  Whigs,  which  the  ghost  of  the  Globe  has  quoted, 
because  these  words  were  never  uttered  by  me,  and 
because  at  the  time  they  were  peremptorily  contra- 
dicted in  your  journal,  twenty-four  hours  after  they 
were  anonymously  asserted  to  have  been  expressed. 
No  one  ever  attempted  to  substantiate  them,  and  the 
lie  died  away  like  many  others.  As  for  the  extracts 
from  my  address  to  which  the  specter  has  also  ap- 

236 


«■! 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

pealed,  I  beg  to  inform  the  apparition  that  I  have  not 
'thrown  over'  any  of  the  excellent  objects  which  are 
enumerated  in  it.  The  Keform  Bill  may  be,  as  the 
editor  of  the  Globe  for  once  pertinently  expresses  it, 
a  dishonest  trick  of  the  oligarchical  Whigs,  but  it 
does  not  follow  that,  like  many  other  tricks,  it  may 
not  lead  to  consequences  which  the  tricksters  never 
anticipated. 

"As  for  the  honorable  member  for  Middlesex,  he 
has  never  attacked  me,  and  I  have  therefore  ever  felt 
bound  by  the  courtesy'  of  society  not  to  introduce  the 
name  of  that  gentleman  into  these  discussions  more 
than  was  absolutely  necessary;  but  do  not  let  the 
editor  of  the  Globe  again  commit  his  old  error, 
and  attribute  to  apprehension  what  courtesy  alone 
prompted.  I  repeat,  that  Mr.  Hume's  letter,  to  which 
the  editor  of  the  Globe  originally  alluded,  was  ad- 
dressed to  a  third  person.^ 

"Four-and-twenty  hours  after  it  appeared  at  Wy- 
combe, by  some  extraordinary  circumstance  a  letter 
written  by  the  same  gentleman  was  circulated  there 
in  favor  of  Colonel  Grey  by  the  committee  of  my  gal- 
lant opponent.  Whatever  might  be  the  value  of  Mr. 
Hume's  letter,  I  did  not  choose  to  pass  by  in  silence 
a  proceeding  which  appeared  to  every  one  very  ex- 
traordinary, therefore  I  instantly  saw  Mr.  Hume,  w^ho 
afforded  me  a  satisfactory  explanation.  He  afforded 
it  to  me  by  way  of  letter,  and  concluded  that  letter 
with  the  expressions  quoted  by  the  ingenious  editor 
of  the  Globe.  This  letter  was  necessarily  printed;  but 
this  is  not  the  letter  which  has  been  appealed  to  in 
this  controversy.  All  the  details  about  my  introduc- 
tion to  Mr.  Hume,  with  a  letter  from  Mr.  Bulwer,  and 
my  frequent  conferences  with  Mr.  Hume  at  his  house, 

•  A  confusion  of  memory.     It  was  addressed  to  Disraeli,  though  given  to 
Bulwer. 

237 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

are,  as  usual  with  the  Globe,  utter  falsehoods.  I  never 
saw  Mr.  Hume  but  once  in  my  life,  and  that  was  at 
the  House  of  Commons;  the  object  of  that  interview 
was  to  request  an  explanation  of  the  circumstances 
which  I  have  mentioned,  and  to  that  circumstance 
the  interview  was  confined. 

"The  same  reason  that  deterred  me  from  unneces- 
sarily introducing  the  name  of  Mr.  Hume,  precludes 
me  from  noticing  the  anonymous  insinuations  of  the 
editor  of  the  Globe  respecting  Lord  Durham;  and  only 
that  reason. 

"Like  the  man  who  left  off  fighting  because  he 
could  not  keep  his  wife  from  supper,  the  editor  of  the 
Globe  has  been  pleased  to  say  that  he  is  disinclined  to 
continue  this  controversy  because  it  gratifies  my 
'passion  for  notoriety.'  The  editor  of  the  Globe  must 
have  a  more  contracted  mind,  a  paltrier  spirit,  than 
even  I  imagined,  if  he  can  suppose  for  a  moment  that 
an  ignoble  controversy  with  an  obscure  animal  like 
himself  can  gratify  the  passion  for  notoriety  of  one 
whose  works  at  least  have  been  translated  into  the 
languages  of  polished  Europe,  and  circulate  by  thou- 
sands in  the  Xew  World.  It  is  not  then  my  passion 
for  notoriety  that  has  induced  me  to  tweak  the  editor 
of  the  Globe  by  the  nose,  and  to  inflict  sundry  kicks 
upon  the  baser  part  of  his  base  body;  to  make  him 
eat  dirt,  and  his  own  words,  fouler  than  any  filth;  but 
because  I  wished  to  show  to  the  world  what  a  miser- 
able poltroon,  what  a  craven  dullard,  what  a  literary 
scarecrow,  what  a  mere  thing,  stuffed  with  straw  and 
rubbish,  is  the  soi-dif^nuf  director  of  public  opinion  and 
official  organ  of  Whig  politics. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

Bather  unluckily  (for  our  patience)  Mr.  Hume  and 

238 


THE   SCRAMBLE    FOR   A   SEAT 

and  his  secretary  now  allowed  themselves  to  be  ral- 
lied to  the  (ilohc.  The  battle  alread}^  fought  by  Dis- 
raeli liad  to  be  fought  again,  but  with  none  of  the 
enkindling  zest  that  at  first  carries  the  combatant 
to  deeds  of  daring;  nay,  London,  one  thinks,  might 
have  become  almost  a  deserted  village  itself  at  the 
mere  prospect  of  this  restatement  of  the  episodes  of 
the  old  electoral  wars.  For  us,  who  look  backward, 
there  is  at  least  this  cumulative  interest  with  which 
Disraeli's  after-career  invested  these  early  assaults 
upon  the  seriousness  of  his  aims  and  the  fixity  of  his 
tenure  of  opinion.  If  spite  (one  can  call  it  no  less)  was 
a  larger  ingredient  in  public  affairs  then  than  now, 
the  increase  of  toleration  has  been  won  for  us  prin- 
cipally by  Disraeli:  partly  by  what  he  himself  bore 
from  the  mud-throw  at  every  step  forward — we  see 
now  its  futility  as  well  as  its  meanness— and  partly 
by  that  good  temper  and  that  personal  deference  with 
which,  during  his  own  years  of  political  leadership, 
he  delivered  his  most  penetrating  volleys  into  the 
sides  of  his  opponents.  Party  government  to-day,  even 
with  the  barriers  broken  down,  Disraeli-wise,  may 
seem  little  more  than  a  travesty  to  the  oulookiug  phi- 
losopher; but  in  the  days  with  which  we  are  now  deal- 
ing it  was  in  effect  civil  war. 

To  Joseph  Hume,  Esq.,  M.P. 

"34  Upper  Grosvknor  Street, 
^'Monday  evening  [Jannory  llt/i,  1836]. 

"Sir:  You  have,  at  length,  dropped  the  mask; 
and,  in  becoming  my  avowed  assailant,  you  permit  me 
to  relate  circumstances  which  would,  long  ago,  have 

239 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

silenced  the  idle  controversy  with  which  the  evening 
organ  of  \Yhig  politics  has  attempted  to  cloak  its  re- 
cent disgraceful  discomfiture.  I  have  mentioned  in 
my  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Times  that  I  have  only 
met  3'ou  once,  and  that  was  at  the  House  of  Commons: 
it  appears  you  were  then  attending  the  Indian  Com- 
mittee; you  know  very  well  under  what  circumstances 
I  was  forced  to  apply  to  you  personally  on  that  occa- 
sion; 3"ou  know  you  had  conducted  yourself  toward 
me  in  a  manner  which  was  not  only  a  violation  of  all 
the  courtesies,  but  of  the  common  honesty  of  life;  you 
know  the  extreme  difficulty  which  I  had  in  extracting 
from  3'ou  a  satisfactory  explanation,  and  I  can  not 
forget,  though  you  may,  the  offers  of  service  which  on 
that  occasion  you  made  me,  and  which  I  declined. 
Some  months  after  this,  a  vacancy,  which  never  oc- 
curred, being  threatened  in  the  borough  of  Maryle- 
bone,  I  announced  myself  in  opposition  to  the  Whig 
candidate,  who  was  already  in  the  field.  In  the  course 
of  my  canvass,  I  called  upon  Mr.  Joseph  Hume,  an 
influential  elector  of  that  borough,  one,  too,  recently 
so  profuse  in  his  offers  of  service,  and  now  in  violent 
opposition  to  that  party  which  I  had  ever  resisted; 
3"ou  were,  I  was  informed,  severely  indisposed;  you 
were  not  even  seen  by  me,  but  I  explained  to  your 
clerk  or  secretary  the  object  of  my  visit,  and,  that  no 
error  might  occur,  I  wrote  a  letter  to  your  house, 
which  I  delivered  to  that  secretary;  doubtless,  being  a 
canvassing  epistle,  it  was  sufficiently  complimentary. 
It  is  obvious  3'ou  take  very  good  care  of  these  docu- 
ments, but  why  is  not  this  letter  produced?  Because 
it  would  have  explained  how  your  secretary  remem- 
bered my  calling  at  your  residence,  and  because  it 
would  have  confirmed  my  previous  account;  and  when 
I  did  call,  I  had  not  the  honor  of  seeing  yourself. 
Your  impression'  that  I  did  call  upon  you  in  Bryan- 

240 


THE   SCRAMBLE    FOR   A   SEAT 

stou  Square  at  the  begiiiiiiu<>-  of  your  letter,  at  the  end 
of  your  roiiiiiiuiiicatiou  s\yells  iuto  certainty.  Why 
were  yon  more  certain  at  the  termination  of  your 
epistle  than  at  the  beginning?  Were  you  strength- 
ened by  your  secretary's  recollection  of  me?  1  haye 
shown  how  we  chanced  to  meet;  the  truth  is,  you 
wished  to  confirm  an  anonymous  libeler  in  his  state- 
ment, that  I  had  sought  a  former  interview  with  you 
before  I  became  a  candidate  at  Wycombe,  and  it  is 
obvious,  from  the  cautious  mendacity  at  the  com- 
mencement of  3'our  letter,  that  you  were  aware  that 
you  were  countenancing  a  lie. 

"But  I  have  not  done  Avith  you.  Whether  you 
wrote  a  letter  of  me  or  to  me  at  Wycombe,  whether 
I  saw  you  when  I  called  at  your  house  or  not,  whether 
we  met  half  a  dozen  times  or  only  once,  what,  after 
all,  has  this  miserable  trifling  to  do  with  the  merits 
of  the  question?  This  controversy  commenced  by  the 
evening  organ  of  the  Whig  being  instructed  by  its 
masters  to  attack  and  answer  my  Tindicafiou  of  the 
English  Constitution',  the  unlettered  editor  of  the  Glohe, 
as  ignorant  of  the  history  as  he  is  of  the  language  of 
his  country,  puzzled  and  confounded,  sought  refuge  in 
the  vile  and  vulgar  expedient  of  personally  abusing  the 
author;  if  he  can  not  redeem  his  oft-repeated  bluster 
of  reputation,  let  his  masters  hire  another,  and  abler, 
hack  tobafflethat  exposureof  theplotsand  fallaciesof 
their  unprincipled  faction.  The  illogical  editor  of  the 
filohc,  incompetent  to  distinguish  between  principles 
and  measures,  accused  me  of  political  tergiversation, 
because  with  the  same  principles  as  I  had  ever  pro- 
fessed I  was  not  of  opinion  that  in  1835  two  particular 
measures  were  necessary  which  I  deemed  expedient  in 
1832.  I  stated  my  reasons  wliy  I  no  longer  deemed 
those  measures  expedient.  The  editor  of  the  Glohe  has 
never  answered  them,  but  if  the  editor  of  the  Glohe 
1*  241 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

requires  any  further  information  on  this  subject,  if 
he  be  still  anxious  to  learn  how  it  may  be  possible, 
without  any  forfeiture  of  political  principles,  to  hold 
different  opinions  at  different  seasons  respecting 
political  measures,  I  refer  him  to  his  patron.  Lord 
John  Kussell,  the  whilom  suj)porter  of  triennial  Par- 
liaments; or  his  ancient  master,  Lord  Spencer,  the 
umquhile  advocate  of  the  ballot.  If  these  right  hon- 
orable personages  can  not  succeed  in  introducing  a 
comprehension  of  this  subject  into  the  unparalleled 
skull  of  the  editor  of  the  Glohe,  why,  then  he  must  even 
have  recourse  to  that  Magnus  Apollo  of  the  Treasury 
Bench,  Sir  John  Hobhouse,  who  will  doubtless  make 
it  most  lucidly  obvious  to  him  how  a  man  who  com- 
mences a  political  career,  pledged  to  annual  Parlia- 
ments and  universal  suffrage,  may  duly  dwindle  into 
a  low  Whig  upholder  of  a  senatorial  existence  of 
seven  years,  and  a  suffrage  limited  to  the  mystical 
boundary  of  a  ten-pound  franchise, 

"But,  sir,  as  you  are  so  happy  in  addressing  letters 
to  the  editor  of  the  Glohe,  and  since  your  political  con- 
sistency is  so  universally  acknowledged  that  you,  as 
you  classically  express  it,  can  not  put  pen  to  paper 
without  producing  some  fresh  evidence  of  public  in- 
tegrity, permit  me  to  ask  you  what  is  yoijr  opinion 
of  the  consistency  of  that  man  who,  after  having 
scraped  together  a  fortune  by  jobbing  in  Government 
contracts  in  a  colony,  and  entering  the  House  of  Com- 
mons as  the  Tory  representative  of  a  close  corpora- 
tion, suddenly  becomes  the  apostle  of  economy  and 
unrestricted  suffrage,  and  closes  a  career,  com- 
menced and  matured  in  corruption,  by  spouting  sedi- 
tion in  Middlesex,  and  counseling  rebellion  in  Can- 
ada? "Your  obedient  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 


242 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

The  question  of  Disraeli's  political  faith  at  Wy- 
combe, which  a  glance  at  his  addresses  and  speeches 
would  have  settled,  was  to  be  decided  by  Disraeli's 
personal  veracity,  and  that  was  to  depend  on  the  ac- 
curacy of  his  memory  for  events  of  three  or  four  years 
earlier  in  a  very  crowded  life.  If  he  were  found  in 
error,  he  was  a  liar  and  done  with;  if  others  were  in 
error — they  were  but  human.  It  was  on  this  sort  of 
"heads  I  win,  tails  you  lose"  gamble  that  Disraeli  the 
Alien  was  expected  to  play  with  John  Bull  the  Just 
for  many  years;  one  might  say,  in  a  sense,  until  the 
close  of  his  life.  In  this  case  the  lucky  link  was  forth- 
coming, and  Bulwer,  who  had,  we  may  guess,  rather 
underlined  the  Radical  items  in  the  Disraelian  pro- 
gram— short  Parliaments,  the  ballot,  and  untaxed 
knowledge — when  he  solicited  the  help  of  O'Connell 
and  of  Hume  for  this  anti-Whig  candidate,  his  friend, 
at  any  rate,  bore  witness  to  the  bare  contested  facts, 
apart  from  principle,  and  bore  witness  in  Disraeli's 
behalf.  An  old  letter  of  his  to  Disraeli,  which  removed 
the  incidents  narrated  from  the  mere  effort  of  mem- 
ory, was  found  and  published  in  Disraeli's  next  letter 
to  the  Times.  Of  Bulwer  himself  let  it  be  said  that 
even  he,  who  saw  two  sides  of  most  questions — a  fatal 
power  of  vision,  he  thought — did  not  understand  the 
Disraelian  blend  of  Tory-Radical.  Writing  at  this 
time  (January  7,  183G)  to  Mr.  Cox  of  Taunton,  Bulwer 
says:  "I  question  his  philosophy;  but  I  do  not  doubt 
his  honor.'' 


243 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "Times." 

"  January  13th  [1836]. 

"Sir:  I  had  hoped  not  to  have  troubled  you  again 
on  the  subject  of  Mr.  Hume,  his  public  statements, 
and  his  private  secretary,  but  a  circumstance  has  just 
occurred,  very  gratifying  to  me,  which,  I  should  think, 
must  be  scarcely  less  to  every  manly  mind  who  re- 
joices in  the  exposure  of  a  virulent  conspiracy.  A 
friend  of  mine  has  discovered  among  my  papers  at 
Bradenham  a  letter  of  Mr.  Bulwer,  which  originally 
led  to  the  Wycombe  correspondence.    Here  it  follows: 

"  Copp  of  a  letter  from  Mr.  Bulwer  to  Mr,  Disraeli, 
June  3,   1833. 

"  OIy  dear  Disraeli:  I  have  received  from  my 
friend  ]\Ir.  Hume  a  letter  addressed  to  you,  which  I 
have  forwarded  to  Bradenham.  In  case  you  should 
not  receive  it  in  such  good  time  as  may  be  wished,  I 
may  as  well  observe  that  in  it  Mr.  Hume  expresses  his 
great  satisfaction  at  hearing  you  are  about  to  start 
for  Wycombe — his  high  opinion  of  your  talents  and 
principles — and  while  he  regrets  he  knows  no  one  at 
Wycombe  whom  otherwise  he  would  certainly  en- 
deavor to  interest  in  your  behalf,  he  avails  himself  of 
his  high  situation  in  public  esteem  to  remind  the 
electors  of  Wycombe  that  the  Reform  Bill  is  but  a 
means  to  the  end  of  good  and  cheap  government,  and 
that  they  ought  to  show  themselves  deserving  of  the 
results  of  that  great  measure  by  choosing  members 
of  those  talents  and  those  principles  which  can  alone 
advocate  the  popular  cause,  and  which  ]\rr.  Hume 
joins  with  me  in  believing  you  so  eminently  possess. 
You  will  receive  this  letter  at  latest  on  Tuesday  morn- 
ing, and  so  anxious  was  he  in  your  behalf,  that  he 

244 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

would  not  leave  Londou,  thouj^b  on  matters  of  urgent 
private  business,  until  he  bad  written  it. 

"  'Assuring  you,  etc., 

"'E.     L.     BULWER.' 

"That  I  may  not  be  considered  under  any  circum- 
stances ungrateful  to  a  gentleman  wbo  was  '  so 
anxious  on  my  bebalf  that  he  would  not  leave  London, 
though  on  matters  of  urgent  private  business,'  I  will 
just  observe  that  almost  ere  the  ink  was  dry  of  the 
letter  in  which  I  acknowledged  the  receipt  of  his 
favor,  and  the  tone  of  which  alone  would  prove  we 
had  then  no  personal  acquaintance,  I  found  this  same 
Mr.  Hume,  without  giving  any  notice  to  Mr.  Bulwer 
or  myself  of  his  intention,  not  only  exerting  his  influ- 
ence in  London  against  me,  but  absolutely  writing 
canvassing  letters  in  favor  of  my  opponent.  On  seek- 
ing an  explanation  from  him  of  this  conduct — the  only 
time,  I  repeat,  and  as  I  now  prove,  I  ever  saw  Mr. 
Hume — he  informed  me  that  he  could  not,  on  reflec- 
tion, countenance  so  violent  an  opponent  to  the 
Whigs. 

"This  letter  of  Mr.  Bulwer,  sir,  accounts  for  the 
only  error  which  I  have  committed  in  my  statement, 
although  I  wrote  from  memory.  Recollecting  that  I 
became  acquainted  with  the  contents  of  Mr.  Hume's 
letter  in  a  communication  from  Mr.  Bulwer,  I  took  it 
for  granted,  as  in  the  instance  of  Mr.  O'Connell,  that 
the  letter  was  addressed  to  ]\rr.  Bulwer,  and  that  Mr. 
Bulwer  communicated  the  substance  of  it  to  me  at 
Bradenham;  an  error  so  trivial  hardly  exceeds  a 
clerical  mistake.  Every  other  statement  I  have  made 
— though,  I  repeat,  merely  writing  from  memory  and 
in  baste — is  not  only  substantially,  but  absolutely 
correct.  Every  statement  that  Mr.  Hume  has  made, 
though  writing  at  leisure  and  with  an  appeal  to  docu- 

245 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ments,  is  substantially  and  absolutely  incorrect.  I 
had  no  motive  to  misrepresent  the  circumstances,  for 
they  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  merits  of  my  case. 
Mr.  Hume  had  every  motive  to  misrepresent  the  cir- 
cumstances, for  on  their  misrepresentation  his  case 
entirely  depended.  In  attempting  to  crush  a  political 
opponent,  he  has  been  hoist  with  his  own  petard,  and 
afforded  the  public  a  further  illustration  of  his  pro- 
verbial veracity.  As  for  the  poor  editor  of  the  Glohe, 
he  of  course  feels  like  any  other  tool  who  has  failed 
in  a  dirty  job.  But  for  the  private  secretary,  who 
recollects  my  calling  at  the  house  with  Mr.  Bulwer, 
seeing  and  conferring  with  Mr.  Hume,  and  receiving 
from  his  own  hands  his  celebrated  autograph,  what 
an  invaluable  memory  he  has! 

"T  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  your  obliged  and 

obedient  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

Here  we  get  quit  of  the  pother  caused  by  the 
Ideality  of  the  Young  Politician  in  a  country  which 
thinks  in  words  rather  than  speaks  its  thoughts,  and 
which  especially  preferred,  at  that  date,  the  mutton- 
chop  whiskers  of  Pam  before  all  the  ringlets  of  Dis- 
raeli. Yet  our  customary  postscript,  in  all  that  con- 
cerns the  Disraeli  of  combat,  is  not  here  denied  us. 
Of  Hume,  who  had  seized  a  free  moment,  when  he 

was  not 

Taking  the  sense 
Of  the  House  on  a  saving  of  thirteen  pence, 

to  join  in  this  attempt  to  extinguish  him,  the  Disraeli 
of  after-years,  Disraeli  the  forgiver,  was  able  to  make 
a  just  and  even  a  generous  estimate: 

"They,"  he  wrote  of  the  Badical  party  in  his  Life 

246 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A    SEAT 

of  Lord  George  Bentinek,  ''mainly  depend  on  the  multi- 
farious information  and  vast  experience  of  Mr.  Hume, 
who  towers  amonj^st  them  without  a  rival.  Future 
Parliaments  will  do  justice  to  the  eminent  services 
of  this  remarkable  man,  still  the  most  hard-working 
of  the  House,  of  which  he  is  now  the  father.  IMs 
labors  on  public  committees  will  be  often  referred 
to  hereafter,  and  then,  perhaps,  it  will  be  remembered 
that,  during  a  career  of  forty  years,  and  often  under 
circumstances  of  great  provocation,  he  never  once 
lost  his  temper." 

One  word  more  of  Mr.  Hume.  If  he  did  not  suc- 
cessfully father  Disraeli  at  his  Parliamentary  birth, 
he  did  at  least  as  unexpected  a  thing — gave  a  name 
to  the  party  of  young  men  who  put  themselves  under 
Disraeli's  leadership  in  a  movement  of  social  regen- 
eration. On  this  point  there  is  now  no  better  author- 
ity living  than  the  Duke  of  Rutland,  who  thus  replies 
to  a  query  I  put  to  him:  ''I  believe  the  story  is  true 
that  the  name  'Young  England'  was  given  by  Mr. 
Hume,  who,  annoyed  at  being  interrupted  in  one  of 
his  dreary  statistical  speeches,  attributed  the  inter- 
ruption to  'Young  England,  which  had  come  down 
after  dinner  in  white  waistcoats,'  etc." 

Another  postscript  indicative  of  Disraeli's  essen- 
tial good-nature  must  be  made.  It  has  to  do  with 
"The  Delectable  Mr.  Hayward" — Disraeli  so  described 
Abraham  Hayward  in  a  letter  telling  his  sister  of  his 
fellow-guests  at  the  Deepdene,  Christmas,  1840. 

Ten  years  later  this  "delectable"  Edijihurgh  Re- 
viewer wrote  to  Lady  Morgan:  "Protection  is  dead, 
and  Disraeli  very  nearly,  if  not  quite,  forgotten.     How 

247 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

soon  one  of  these  puffed-up  reputations  goes  down — 
it  is  like  a  bladder  after  the  pricking  of  a  pin."  Pro- 
tection, fiftj'  3'ears  later,  seems  but  sleeping;  and  the 
''bladder"  was  not,  after  all,  very  effectually  pricked 
by  Abraham's  pen.  In  1853  Hayward  was  anxious  to 
do  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  on  Mr.  G.  H.  Francis's 
"critical  biography"  of  Disraeli.  "I  know  every  inci- 
dent of  his  life,"  he  boasts  to  his  editor,  "and  it  was  I 
who  furnished  C.  Buller  with  the  materials  of  his  Dis- 
raeli articles  in  the  Globe  in  1836-7."  With  a  resource 
in  metaphor  almost  equaling  in  banality  the  bladder 
allusion  of  the  last  letter,  Hayward  rather  inconse- 
quently  adds:  "His  fate  is  still  wavering  in  the  bal- 
ance, though  he  is  beginning  to  kick  the  beam."  With 
Hayward's  assistance  the  struggle  would  be  at  an 
end.  The  editor  was  a  little  shy;  and  the  "delectable" 
Hayward  further  alludes  to  these  Globe  articles  for  his 
enlightenment;  saying  that  Dizzy,  charged  with  the 
Westminster  Club,  "admitted  the  club  and  said  he  did 
not  know  its  politics!" — a  statement,  or  rather  a  mark 
of  exclamation,  which  the  reader  can  test  by  the  full 
account  of  that  transaction  given  elsewhere  in  these 
pages.  "I  cut  him  till  w^e  met  at  Deepdene  after  his 
marriage"  is  another  Hayward  saying,  and  of  the 
very  visit  which  labeled  him  the  "delectable." 

The  revisions  in  The  Revolutionary  Epic  made  by 
Disraeli  in  the  1864  edition  were  stigmatized  by  Hay- 
ward, writing  to  Gladstone,  as  "a  trick."  Gladstone, 
as  to  whom  some  people  were  under  the  impression 
that  he  liked  to  hear  these  things,  did  not  on  this  occa- 
sion take  the  Hayward  line,  or  took  it  only  very  faint- 

248 


THE   SCRAMBLE   FOR   A   SEAT 

heartedly.  ''The  amendments  made  are,  I  think,  not 
purely  literary;  but  I  do  not  see  that  it  is  worth  his 
■while  to  make  them.  With  respect  to  the  franchise, 
I  think  Disraeli  always  maintained  that  when  the 
time  came  for  dealing  with  Parliamentary  reform, 
the  laboring  classes  must  be  rather  freely  admitted 
to  the  suffrage."  In  1873,  when  Gladstone's  Irish 
University  Bill  was  defeated  by  a  majority  of  three, 
without  Disraeli's  acceptance  of  ofiQce,  Hayward 
wrote  to  the  baffled  but  not  ousted  Minister:  "What  a 
time  you  must  have  had  of  it  owing  to  the  tricks  of 
Disraeli!"  Tricks!  Years  went  on,  and  Abraham 
Hayward  could  not  learn.  At  the  close  of  1875  he 
declaims  against  Disraeli's  purchase  of  the  Suez  Ca- 
nal shares.  "Surely,"  we  find  him  saying  to  Lord 
Carlingford,  "Parliament  will  never  sanction  such  a 
step  as  this."  Wrong  in  his  immediate  anticipation 
of  events,  he  nevertheless  proceeds  with  his  further 
prophecy:  "It  is  Disraeli  all  over,f/c  Vaudacc^de  Vaudace, 
ioujours  dc  Vaudace!  To  buy  a  partnership  can  only  be 
the  source  of  constant  embarrassment."  What  ven- 
geance does  the  lapse  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  bring 
on  men  like  Ha^-ward;  the  predicted  "source  of  em- 
barrassment" has  proved  a  constant  source  of 
strength  and  of  wealth.  But,  after  an  event,  nobody 
could  be  wiser  than  Hayward.  "Dizzy's  peerage  was 
just  what  I  expected,"  he  tells  Sir  William  Stirling- 
Maxwell  in  1876.  The  Gladstonian  majority  of  one 
hundred  and  twenty  at  the  Gene^'al  Election  of  1880 
brought  him  delight.  He  counted  with  glee  the 
Liberal  successes  on  the  first  day.    "The  beginning," 

249 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

he  says,  "always  influences  the  middle  and  the  end — 
people  like  to  be  on  the  winning  side."  The  great 
"moral"  victory,  which  was  also  a  great  electoral 
victory,  is  thus  analyzed  by  one  of  the  men  who  la- 
bored hardest  to  obtain  it:  "People  like  to  be  on  the 
winning  side!"  If  Abraham  Hayward  did  but  meas- 
ure the  public  corn  in  his  own  bushel,  if  Success — 
the  god,  we  get  to  believe,  of  a  hundred  of  his  con- 
temporaries— really  was  his  test  of  eminence,  then 
for  him  the  growing  fame  of  Lord  Beaconsfleld  is  Hay- 
ward's  epitaph  as  a  reader  of  men  and  things.  Dis- 
raeli's unsuspecting  phrase,  "the  delectable,"  remains, 
and  will  outlive  all  memory  of  Hayward's  rancors. 

"Dizzy  was  advertised  with  Rush"  (a  then  talked- 
about  murderer)  "as  the  latest  addition  to  Madame 
Tussaud's  Repository":  this  is  another  Haywardism, 
a  sort  of  continuation  of  the  "kicking  the  beam"  simile. 
At  the  end  of  days,  notes  of  admiration,  not  notes  of 
derision,  became  his  occupation  in  presence  of  Mrs. 
Langtry.  He  even  corresponded  with  Mr.  Gladstone 
about  that  lady's  glories  and  charms.  Happy  man,  he 
had  found  a  real  genius  at  last. 

"There  is  no  place  like  Bradenham,"  said  he  in  a 
Home  Letter  of  1830.  The  Disraelis  left  Bloomsbury 
Home  of  his  Square  for  the  country  in  1829;  and  after 
Youth.  a  stay  at  Hyde  House,  Hyde  Heath,  took 

up  their  abode  at  Bradenham.  It  was  in  the  August 
of  1830,  when  he  had  been  three  months  absent  on  his 
long  foreign  tour,  that  he  wrote  in  effect:  "There  is 
no  place  like  home" — that  home  being  Bradenham. 

250 


w 


HOME   OF   HIS    YOUTH 

His  letters  to  his  sister  enshrine  the  associations  the 
place  had  for  her  and  for  him  in  their  loving  inter- 
course; and  in  Endymion,  the  last  of  his  novels,  he 
babbled  of  that  green  lawn,  those  beloved  walls,  the 
avenue,  and  the  anteroom  where  he  had  lain  in  a  sort 
of  trance,  the  beginning  of  the  illness  that  drove  him 
abroad. 

"At  the  foot  of  the  Berkshire  downs,  and  itself  on 
a  gentle  elevation,  there  is  an  old  hall  with  gable 
ends  and  lattice  windows,  standing  in  grounds  which 
were  once  stately,  where  there  are  yet  glades  like  ter- 
races of  yew-trees  which  give  an  air  of  dignity  to  the 
neglected  scene.  ]Mr.  Ferrars"  (a  man  in  whom  we 
get  abundant  hints  at  Isaac  D'Israeli)  "w^as  persuaded 
to  go  down  alone  to  reconnoiter  the  place.  It  pleased 
him.  It  was  aristocratic,  yet  singularly  inexpensive. 
The  house  contained  an  immense  hall  which  reached 
the  roof,  and  which  would  have  become  a  baronial 
mansion,  and  a  vast  staircase  in  keeping;  but  the 
living-rooms  were  moderate,  even  small,  in  dimen- 
sions, and  not  numerous.  The  land  he  was  expected 
to  take  consisted  only  of  a  few  meadows,  and  a  single 
laborer  could  manage  the  garden." 

To  this  pleasant  place,  within  easy  reach  of  Lon- 
don, Disraeli  repaired  from  the  stress  of  town  at  the 
season's  end,  or  when  the  writing  humor  seized  him. 
Hither,  too,  came  his  friends  Bulwer,  D'Orsay,  and 
Lyndhurst — all  having  henceforth  a  good  word  for 
Bradenham. 

From  1834  until  the  end  of  her  London  career. 

251 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

which  was  also  nearly  the  end  of  her  life,  Disraeli 
maintained  a  steady  friendship  for  a  lady  of  fame  who 
,  ^  .     J  ^.      was  in  some  sort  a  leader,  if  not  strictly 

A  Friendship — 

"Dearest  Lady  of  society  in  her  own  time,  certainly  a 
Biessington."  j^^^^j,  j^^^^.j^  followed  by  ladies,  unconven- 
tional as  she,  who  are  very  much  in  society  to-day. 

Lady  Biessington  was,  if  not  a  beauty,  a  very 
pretty  woman;  and  if  not  a  woman  of  "genius"  (as 
Landor  called  her  to  her  face),  a  woman  of  talent.  All 
allow  that  she  left  mediocrity  behind  her  when  the 
quality  to  be  rated  was — charm.  She  attracted;  she 
was  admired  by  a  multitude  of  men;  and  by  Disraeli 
admired  and  loved  as  well.  Who  can  doubt  it  in  face 
of  one  of  these  letters?  She  had  the  gift  of  friendship, 
little  as  her  narrow  and  correct  epistolary  st}  le  may 
hint  at  it.  These  letters  and  stories  seem  to  make  up, 
in  conventionalism,  to  the  violated  conventions  with 
which  unkind  circumstance  had  associated  her  early 
womanhood.  In  her  courage,  her  industry,  her  enter- 
prise— not  often  the  virtues  of  a  rich  and  brilliant 
woman — she  was  great.  It  is  this  slight  anomaly — 
this  combination  of  manly  qualities  with  luxurious 
life,  with  a  conspicuously  showy  menage,  and  with  ex- 
ceedingly insipid  and  sentimental  literature,  that 
makes  Lady  Biessington,  whichever  way  the  mood 
takes  you,  interesting  or  uninteresting. 

She  was  born  in  1779,  in  Ireland,  one  of  the  six 
children  of  Edmund  Power,  a  rollicking  squire  of  the 
time,  spirited  and  needy  at  his  best;  at  his  worst  vio- 
lent and  drunken.  This  father,  on  the  verge  of  ruin, 
gave  Marguerite  in  marriage,  in  her  childhood  (she 

252 


A   FRIENDSHIP 

was  little  more  than  fifteen),  to  a  half-insane  and 
brutal  Captain  Farmer,  from  whom — after  three  un- 
happy months — she  found  courage  to  part,  returning 
to  the  minor  misery  of  her  father's  house.  Thence, 
after  three  humiliating  years,  under  fear  of  the  return 
from  India  of  her  drunken  husband,  she  departed, 
placing  herself  under  the  protection  of  Captain  Jen- 
kins. Some  years  later  he  ceded  her  to  Lord  Blessing- 
ton,  who  offered  a  legitimate  marriage,  then  made 
possible  by  the  death  of  Captain  Farmer.  She  was 
not  quite  thirty  when  she  assumed  the  name  she  w^as 
to  make  so  ornamental.  Her  husband  had  had  some 
public  misadventures  in  regard  to  a  former  marriage, 
and  this  fact,  added  to  Lady  Blessington's  past,  put 
their  position  definitely  outside  the  rather  arbitrarily 
^nd  capriciously  placed  fence  of  society. 

But  her  house  in  St.  James's  Square  was  the  re- 
sort of  all  the  clever  and  great  men  from  Wellington 
to  Durham,  Napoleon  (afterward  the  Third)  to  Dis- 
raeli. When  the  Whigs  had  Holland  House  for  their 
headquarters,  Lord  Durham's  party  foregathered  at 
"that  woman's,"  whom  Lady  Holland  did  not  "know." 
Lady  Blessington,  as  a  widow,  had  her  solitude  en- 
livened by  Count  D'Orsay,  a  man  whose  brilliant 
parts  are  somewhat  obscured  by  his  brilliant  adorn- 
ment, and  his  great  talents  by  his  great  debts.  To 
him  had  been  given  in  marriage  Lord  Blessington's 
young  stepdaughter — and  with  her  a  great  fortune. 
In  this  case,  strange  to  say,  the  fortune  lasted  longer 
than  the  alliance,  from  which  we  may  judge  that  the 
alliance  ended  almost  at  once;  a  Frenchman  of  the 

253 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

reigning  house  became  the  ally  of  the  girl  D'Orsay 
found  impossible.  D'Orsay  himself,  in  his  last  and 
evil  days,  after  Lady  Blessington's  death,  said  she  had 
been  "a  mother"  to  him — "understand  me,"  he  added, 
speaking  to  Dickens,  "a  mother." 

At  Gore  House,  Kensington,  Lady  Blessington 
made  amends  to  herself  for  other  ills  of  life  by  her 
splendid  salon,  by  furniture  which  must  have  been  in 
the  shocking  taste  of  the  time,  but  was  ''gorgeous" 
in  the  eyes  of  a  Greek  professor  and  an  American 
printer;  by  her  carriage;  by  her  box  at  the  opera;  by 
her  dress;  and,  in  time,  by  "literature."  Probably  her 
luxuries  avenged  her  on  the  ladies  who  did  not  call — 
an  exterior  consolation;  while  her  novels,  and  The 
Book  of  Beauti/,  and  The  Keepsake — ornamental  annuals 
which  she  edited — gave  her  a  more  real  comfort;  for 
the  praises  of  many  people  of  importance  encouraged 
her  to  take  herself  seriously  as  a  Woman  of  Letters. 
D'Orsay  was  grossly  extravagant;  Lady  Blessington 
shared  his  "difficulties,"  and  died  much  impoverished 
and  downfallen,  in  Paris,  in  1849.  The  exile  guest  of 
Gore  House  in  old  times,  become  Prince  President  of 
the  Republic,  did  not  give  her  a  grateful  welcome  to 
his  future  capital.  He  had  been  a  puzzle  in  the  draw- 
ing-room of  Gore  House — "a  deep  man,"  said  some, 
"a  stupid  man,"  said  others,  a  romantic  or  a  vulgar 
conspirator,  or  perhaps  both.  Disraeli  had  thought 
he  would  never  visit  Paris  again,  but  now  he  had  a 
new  inducement,  he  told  her,  faithful  to  the  end  to  the 
"Lady  of  Gore  House,"  to  whom  the  tenderest  pas- 
sage of  any  letter  of  his  yet  published  was  addressed, 

254 


A   FRIENDSHIP 

and  to  whom,  at  once  after  his  marriage,  he  paid  the 
respeet  of  making  her  acquainted  with  his  wife.  The 
following  letters  may  be  conveniently  grouped  to- 
gether here. 

"jT/te  great  object  of  human  legislation  that  people 
should  never  he  happy  together.^' 

"Bradenham, 
"August  5.th,  1834. 

"I  was  so  sorry  to  leave  London  without  being  a 
moment  alone  with  you;  but  although  I  came  to  the 
opera  the  last  night  on  purpose,  Fate  was  against  us. 
I  did  not  reach  this  place  until  Sunday,  very  ill  indeed 
from  the  pangs  of  parting.  Indeed,  I  feel  as  desolate 
as  a  ghost,  and  I  do  not  think  that  I  ever  shall  be  able 
to  settle  to  anything  again.  It  is  a  great  shame,  when 
people  are  happy  together,  that  they  should  be  ever 
separated;  but  it  seems  the  great  object  of  all  human 
legislation  that  people  should  never  be  happy  to- 
gether. 

"My  father  I  find  better  than  I  expected,  and  much 
cheered  bj'  my  presence.  I  delivered  him  all  your  kind 
messages.  He  is  now  very  busy  on  his  Historij  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  in  which  he  is  far  advanced.  I  am  mis- 
taken if  you  will  not  delight  in  these  volumes.  They 
are  full  of  new  views  of  the  history  of  our  language, 
and  indeed  of  our  country,  for  the  history  of  a  State 
is  necessarily  mixed  up  with  the  histbr}-  of  its  litera- 
ture. 

"For  myself,  I  am  doing  nothing.  The  western 
breeze  favors  an  al  fresco  existence,  and  I  am  seated 
Mith  a  pipe  under  a  spreading  sycamore,  solemn  as 
a  pasha.  I  wish  you  would  induce  Hookham  to  en- 
trust me  with  AgatJion,  that  mad  Byronic  novel.  What 
do  you  think  of  the  modern  French  novelists,  and  is 
it  worth  my  while  to  read  them,  and  if  so,  what  do 

255 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

you  recommend  me?  What  of  Balzac?  Is  he  better 
than  Sue  and  Hugo?  I  ask  you  these  questions  be- 
cause you  will  give  me  short  answers,  like  all  people 
who  are  masters  of  their  subject. 

"I  suppose  it  is  vain  to  hope  to  see  my  dear  D'Or- 
say  here;  I  wish  indeed  he  would  come.  Here  is  a 
cook  by  no  means  contemptible.  He  can  bring  his 
horses  if  he  like,  but  I  can  mount  him.  Adieu,  dear 
Lady  Blessington;  some. day  I  will  try  to  write  you 
a  more  amusing  letter;  at  present  I  am  in  truth  ill 
and  sad." 

[Bradenham,  1834.] 
"Dearest  Lady  Blessington:  I  have  intended 
to  return  the  books  and  send  you  these  few  lines 
every  day,  and  I  am  surprised  that  I  could  have  so 
long  omitted  doing  anything  as  writing  to  jou.  We 
are  all  delighted  with  the  portraits;  my  sister  is  col- 
lecting those  of  all  my  father's  friends;  her  collection 
will  include  almost  every  person  of  literary  celebrity 
from  the  end  of  the  Johnsonian  era,  so  your  fair  face 
arrived  just  in  time.  I  am  particularly  delighted  with 
Parris's  portrait,  which  I  had  never  seen  before. 

"I  have  read  the  article  on  Coleridge  in  the 
Quarterly,  but  do  not  agree  with  you  in  holding  it  to 
be  written  by  Lockhart.  It  is  too  good.  L.'s  style  has 
certainly  the  merit  of  being  peculiar.  I  know  none  so 
meager,  harsh,  and  clumsy,  or  more  felicitous  in  the 
jumble  of  commonplace  metaphors.  I  think  the  pres- 
ent reviewal  must  be  by  Nelson  Coleridge,  a  nephew 
of  the  poet  and  a  cleverish  sort  of  fellow^  though 
a  prig. 

"You  give  me  the  same  advice  as  my  father  ever 
has  done  about  dotting  down  the  evanescent  feelings 
of  youth:  but  like  other  excellent  advice,  I  fear  it  will 
prove  unprofitable.     I  have  a  horror  of  journalizing, 

256 


A   FRIENDSHIP 

aud  indeed  of  writing  of  all  description.  With  me 
execution  is  ever  a  labor  and  conception  a  delight. 
Although  a  great  traveler,  I  never  kept  a  diary  in  my 
life." 

Uis  letters  home  very  happily  serve  as  such  over  a 
particularly  interesting  period. 

[Bradenham,  October  17th,  1834.] 

"My  dear  Lady  Blessington:  My  absence  at 
quarter  sessions,  where  I  w^as  bored  to  death,  prevent- 
ed me  instantly  answering  your  letter.  I  hope,  how- 
ever, you  will  receive  this  before  your  departure.  I 
sympathize  with  your  sufferings;  my  experience  un- 
happily assures  me  how  ably  you  describe  them.  This 
golden  autumn  ought  to  have  cured  us  all.  I  myself, 
in  spite  of  the  sunshine,  have  been  a  great  invalid.  In- 
deed, I  know  not  how  it  is,  but  I  am  never  well,  save 
in  action,  and  then  I  feel  immortal.  I  am  ashamed  of 
being  'nervous.'  Dyspepsia  always  makes  me  wish 
for  a  civil  war.  In  the  meantime,  I  amuse  myself  by 
county  politics. 

"I  received  yesterday  a  letter,  most  sprightly  and 
amusing,  from  Bulwer,  dated  Limerick.  He  is  about 
to  return  to  Dublin,  and  talks  of  going  to  Spain. 

"I  am  ashamed  that  I  must  confess  to  him  that 
I  have  not  read  Pompeii,  but  alas!  a  London  bookseller 
treats  us  provincials  with  great  contempt,  and  in 
spite  of  reiterated  epistles,  and  promises  as  numer- 
ous, I  have  not  yet  received  the  much-wished  tomes. 
My  father  sends  his  kindest  regards.  As  for  myself, 
I  am  dying  for  action,  and  rust  like  a  Damascus  saber 
in  the  sheath  of  a  poltroon. 

"Adieu!  dear  friend;  we  shall  meet  on  your  re- 
turn. 

"D." 
18  257 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

[Fehruai-y,  1836.] 

"My  dearest  Lady:  Early  in  March  there  are  to 
be  fifty  members  elected  into  the  Carlton  by  the  mem- 
bers at  large.  A  strong  party  of  my  friends,  Lord  L., 
Lord  Chandos,  Stuart  de  Rothesay,  etc.,  are  very 
active  in  my  behalf,  and  I  think  among  the  leaders  of 
our  party  my  claims  will  be  recognized;  but  doubtless 
there  is  a  sufficient  alloy  of  dunces  even  among  the 
Conservatives,  and  I  have  no  doubt  there  will  be  a 
stout  opposition  to  me.  Although  I  will  not  canvass 
myself,  I  wish  my  friends  to  do  so  most  earnestly.  I 
know  from  personal  experience  that  one  word  from 
you  would  have  more  effect  upon  me  than  letters  from 
all  the  lords  in  Xdom.  I  wish  therefore  to  enlist  you  on 
my  side,  and  will  take  the  liberty  of  sending  you  a  list 
fo-morrow." 

Writing  a  month  later  to  his  sister,  Disraeli  was 
able  to  say: 

"I  carried  the  Carlton;  the  opposition  was  not  in- 
considerable in  the  Committee,  but  my  friends  were 
firm.  Four  hundred  candidates,  and  all,  in  their  own 
opinion,  with  equal  claims!" 

[Bradenham,  Spring,  1837.] 
"My  dear  Lady:  Although  it  is  little  more  than 
a  fortnight  since  I  quitted  your  truly  friendly  and 
hospitable  roof,  both  of  which  I  shall  always  remem- 
ber with  deep  and  lively  gratitude,  it  seems  to  me  at 
least  a  far  more  awful  interval  of  time.  I  have  waited 
for  a  serene  hour  to  tell  you  of  my  doings;  but  serene 
hours  are  rare,  and  therefore  I  will  not  be  deluded 
into  waiting  any  longer.  In  spite  of  every  obstacle 
in  the  shape  of  harassed  feelings  and  other  disagree- 
able accidents  of  life,  I  have  not  forgotten  the  fair 

258 


A   FRIENDSHIP 

Votetia,  who  has  grown  under  my  paternal  care,  and 
has  much  increased  in  grace,  I  hope,  as  in  stature,  or 
rather  dimensions.    She  is  truly  like  her  prototype, 

the  child  of  love, 
Though  born  in  bitterness  and  nurtured  in  convulsion  ; 

but  I  hope  she  will  prove  a  source  of  consolation  to 
her  parent,  and  also  to  her  godmother,  for  I  consider 
you  to  stand  in  that  relation  to  her.  I  do  not  think 
that  you  will  find  any  golden  hint  of  our  musing 
strolls  has  been  thrown  away  upon  me;  and  I  should 
not  be  surprised  if,  in  six  weeks,  she  may  ring  the  bell 
at  your  hall  door,  and  request  admittance,  where  I 
know  she  will  find  at  least  one  sympathizing  friend. 

•'I  have  of  course  no  news  from  this  extreme  soli- 
tude. My  father  advances  valiantly  with  his  great 
enterprise,^  but  works  of  that  caliber  are  hewn  out  of 
a  granite  with  slow  and  elaborate  strokes.  Mine  are 
but  plaster-of-paris  casts,  or  rather  statues  of  snow 
that  melt  as  soon  as  they  are  fashioned. 

"D'Orsay  has  written  me  kind  letters,  which  al-*. 
ways  enspirit  me.  How  are  my  friends,  if  I  have  any? 
At  any  rate,  how  is  Bulwer?  I  can  scarcely  expect 
you  to  find  time  to  write  to  me,  but  I  need  not  say 
what  pleasure  your  handwriting  would  afford  me,  not 
merely  in  penciled  notes  in  a  chance  volume.  This 
is  all  very  stupid,  but  I  could  not  be  quite  silent. 

"Ever  your  Dis." 

The  Byronic  lines  quoted  in  the  letter  appeared  on 
the  title-page  when  Colburn  brought  out  "Vcnctia:  By 

'  Advanced  age  and  the  failure  of  sight  prevented  Isaac  D'Israeli  from  car- 
rying out  his  scheme  for  a  history  of  English  authorship.  Tiie  Amenities  of 
Literature  was  a  fragment  of  tlio  larger  work  he  had  designed.  Sending  a 
copy  to  Bulwer,  he  said  :  '•!  roiuain  in  darkness  and  I  regret  to  say  that  my 
philosopliy  does  not  equal  my  misfortune." 

259 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

the  Author  of  Henrietta  Temple^''  that  year.  With 
Byron  as  Cadurcis  and  Shelley  as  Marmion  Herbert — 
the  common  allotment — readers  must  allow  for  some- 
thing of  a  jumble  between  the  two  characters.  Daily 
details  of  the  poet  who  carried  through  Europe  ''the 
pageant  of  his  bleeding  heart,"  and  prattled  about 
the  names  of  his  washerwomen  during  the  progress, 
were  very  common  proi)erty;  but,  for  his  delineation 
of  Shelley,  Disraeli  found  access  to  what  were  then 
bywaj'S  of  information.  Dr.  Richard  Garnett,  who 
records  this,  adds  the  oUter  dictum  that  Shelley,  had 
he  lived,  would  have  found  Theodora  in  Lothair  his 
favorite  heroine  of  modern  fiction. 

[Fro77i  Bradenham  House,  toward  the  close  o/1837.] 
•'I  see  by  the  papers  that  you  have  quitted  the 
shores  of  the  'far-resounding  sea,'  and  resumed  your 
place  in  the  most  charming  of  modern  houses.  I 
therefore  venture  to  recall  my  existence  to  your  mem- 
ory, and  request  the  favor  of  hearing  some  intelli- 
gence of  yourself,  which  must  always  interest  me. 
Have  you  been  well,  happy,  and  prosperous?  And  has 
that  pen,  plucked  assuredly  from  the  pinion  of  a  bird- 
of-paradise,  been  idle  or  creative?  My  lot  has  been 
as  usual  here,  though  enlivened  by  the  presence  of 
Lady  Sykes,  who  has  contrived  to  pay  us  two  visits, 
and  the  presence  of  Lord  Lyndhurst,  who  also  gave 
us  a  fortnight  of  his  delightful  society. 

"I  am  tolerably  busy,  and  hope  to  give  a  good  ac- 
count of  myself  and  doings  when  we  meet,  which  I 
trust  will  be  soon.  How  goes  that  'great  lubber,'  the 
Public,  and  how  fares  that  mighty  hoax,  the  World? 
Who  of  our  friends  has  distinguished  or  extinguished 
himself   or   herself?     In   short,   as   the  hart   for  the 

2G0 


MEMORIES   OF   TRAVEL 

waterside,  I  pant  for  a  little  news,  but  chiefly  of  your 
fair  and  agreeable  self. 

'*77<('  Book  of  Bvdiitj/  will  soon,  I  fancy,  charm  the 
public  with  its  presence.     Where  have  you  been?  in 

Hampshire  I  heard  from  Lord  L .    IIow  is  the  most 

delightful  of  men  and  best  of  friends,  the  Admirable 
Crichton?  I  don't  mean  Willis,  who,  I  see,  has  mar- 
ried, a  fortune  I  suppose,  though  it  doth  not  sound 
like  one.  How  and  where  is  Bulwer?  How  are  the 
Whigs  and  how  do  they  feel?  All  who  know  you  send 
kind  greetings,  and  all  who  have  not  that  delight,  kind 
wishes.  Peace  be  within  your  walls  and  plenteous- 
ness  within  your  palace.    Vale!    Yours  affectionately, 

"Dis." 

To  Lady  Blessington. 

[1838.] 

"My  dear  Lady  :  I  should  be  mortified  if  The  Book 
of  Beaut  If  appeared  without  my  contribution,  however 
Memories  of  trifling.  I  have  something  on  the  stocks 
Travel  Miti-     f^^j.  y^^^  j^^^  j^  jg  ^qq  elaborate  to  finish 

mentary  ^'^^^  ^^  ^^^  present  tone  of  my  mind;  but 

Imprisonment,  if  you  like  a  Syrian  sketch  of  four  or  five 
pages,  you  shall  have  it  in  two  or  three  days." 

If  this  "Syrian  sketch"  occupied  for  "two  or  three 
days"  the  pen  of  Disraeli,  which,  at  normal  times, 
flowed  so  freely,  either  those  days  must  have  been  dis- 
turbed ones  or  "the  present  tone  of  my  mind"  been 
unfavorable  to  composition.  He  was  in  Parliament; 
but  he  had  debts;  and  the  death  of  his  helpful  col- 
league, Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis,  in  March,  1838,  gave  him 
present  anxieties.  Following  these,  before  haven  was 
reached,  were  the  perturbations  of  "impending  matri- 
mony."   The  mood  may  be  indexed  by  two  little  inci- 

261 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

dents  of  the  June  of  that  year,  when  his  brother 
Ralph's  kindness  supplied  the  Court  suit  which  en- 
abled him  to  see  the  Coronation,  and  when  the  gold 
medal  which  he  got  as  a  member  of  Parliament  was 
presented  at  once  to  Mrs,  Wyndham  Lewis.  In  any 
case,  it  must  have  been  a  little  solace  to  him  to  recur 
in  memory  to  the  orange  and  lemon  groves  about 
Jaffa  ("that  agreeable  town"!),  of  the  Turk  who  there 
smoked  his  narghile,  read  Arabian  poetry,  knelt 
Mecca-ward  at  sunset,  and,  in  Disraeli's  favor,  mar- 
ried gracious  speech  with  gracious  act. 

The  "Admirable  Crichton"  of  the  last  note  en- 
livened Bradenham  more  than  once  with  his  presence: 

[1839.] 

"We  send  back  our  dearest  D'Orsay  ^  with  some 
of  the  booty  of  yesterday's  sport  as  our  homage  to 
you.  His  visit  has  been  very  short  but  very  charming, 
and  everybody  here  loves  him  as  much  as  you  and 
I  do." 

Shortly  before  his  mariage,  in  August,  1839,  Dis- 
raeli gave  to  Mrs.  Wyndham  Lewis — a  great  admirer, 
he  says,  of  aphoristic  writing — Lady  Blessington's 
then  new  book.  Desultory  Thoughts  and  Reflections.  The 
recipient  was  to  mark  what  she  approved.  Says  the 
giver:  "The  volume  is  in  consequence  lying  on  her 
table  with  scarcely  a  margin  not  deeply  scored."  The 
copy  given  was  a  presentation  one  sent  by  the  author 
to  Disraeli,  who  adds:  "I  should  have  written  to 
thank  you  for  this  agreeable  recollection  of  me,  but 
have  intended  every  day  to  do  so  in  person." 

'  After  some  sport  at  Bradenham. 

262 


MEMORIES   OF   TRAVEL 

"It  is  indeed  a  long  time  since  we  met,  but  I  flatter 
and  console  myself  that  we  shall  meet  very  soon  and 
very  often.  But  in  truth,  with  a  gouty  parent  and 
impending  matrimony,  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
the  nuH-hanical  duties  of  society,  the  last  two  months 
have  been  terribly  monopolized:  but  I  can  assure  you 
that  a  day  seldom  passes  that  I  do  not  think  or  speak 
of  you,  and  I  hope  I  shall  alwa^^s  be  allowed  by  you  to 
count  the  Lady  of  Gore  House  among  my  dearest  and 
most  valued  friends.  D'Orsay  was  charming  yester- 
day." 

To  the  same  friend  he  wrote,  a  few  weeks  after 
his  marriage:  "I  remember  your  kind  wish  that  we 
should  meet  before  our  departure,  and  if  not  incon- 
venient to  you  I  would  propose  calling  at  Gore  House 
to-morrow  with  my  dear  Mary  Anne,  who,  I  am  sure, 
will  be  delighted  by  finding  herself  under  a  roof  that 
has  proved  to  me  at  all  times  so  hospitable  and  de- 
voted. I  hope  that  his  engagements  will  not  prevent 
our  meeting  our  friend  Alfred,  for  I  hardly  suppose 
we  shall  have  another  opportunity  of  being  together 
for  some  time.  I  should  imagine  about  three  would 
not  be  unsuitable  to  you." 

[April,  1849.] 

"We  returned  to  town  on  the  16th,  and  a  few  days 
after  I  called  at  Gore  House,  but  you  were  gone.  It 
was  a  pang;  for  though  absorbing  duties  of  my  life 
have  prevented  me  of  late  from  passing  as  much  time 
under  that  roof  as  it  was  once  my  happiness  and  good 
fortune  through  your  kindness  to  do,  you  are  well  as- 
sured that  my  heart  never  changed  for  an  instant  to 
its  inmates,  and  that  T  invariably  entertained  for 
them  the  same  interest  and  affection. 

263 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"Had  I  been  aware  of  jour  intentions,  I  would 
have  come  up  to  town  earlier,  and  especially  to  have 
said  'adieu' — mournful  as  that  is. 

"I  thought  I  should  never  pay  another  visit  to 
Paris,  but  I  have  now  an  object  in  doing  so.  All  the 
world  here  will  miss  you  very  much,  and  the  charm 
with  which  you  invested  existence;  but  for  your  own 
happiness,  I  am  persuaded  you  have  acted  wisely. 
Every  now  and  then  in  this  life  we  require  a  great 
change;  it  wonderfully  revives  the  sense  of  existence. 
I  envy  you;  pray,  if  possible,  let  me  sometimes  hear 
from  you." 

"So  much  for  'the  maddest  of  all  acts'  and  my 

Uncle  G 's  prescience!"  he  said  in  a  Home  Letter 

in  1837.    Disraeli  must  be  forgiven  if,  for 

"Uncle  G ." 

once  in  his  life,  he  made  a  remark  of  the 

"I  told  you  so"  kinship;  for  the  occasion  was  that 
of  his  first  return  to  Parliament — Maidstone,  1837. 

More  about  "Uncle  G "  may  be  gleaned  from  the 

following  domestic  revelations  made  by  Sir  Vincent 
Caillard,  whose  grandmother  (a  Basevi)  was  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  cousin: 

"When  young  Benjamin  Disraeli  started  on  his 
political  career,  he  was,  it  is  no  secret,  hard  pressed 
for  want  of  means.  He  applied  to  his  uncle,  Mr. 
George  Basevi,  who  thereupon  took  counsel  with  his 
son,  Benjamin  Disraeli's  first  cousin,  Nathaniel 
Basevi,  an  eminent  conveyancing  barrister.  Neither 
uncle  nor  cousin  had  any  sympathy  for  the  fiighty 
schemes,  as  they  thought,  of  an  ambitious  dreamer. 
Poor  Benjamin  had  no  security  to  offer  but  his  bound- 
less confidence  in  himself,  and  he  met  with  a  point- 

264 


"UNCLE   G 


blank  refusal.  This  he  would  not  at  first  accept.  He 
continued  eloquently  to  plead  his  cause,  and  making 
no  impression,  he  finally  lost  his  temper,  and  told  the 
Basevis  very  pointedly  what  he  thought  of  them. 
They,  on  the  other  hand,  told  him  in  return,  for  what 
they  hoped  would  be  his  good,  what  tliey  thought  of 
him,  and  in  the  course  of  their  exposition  treated  him 
to  the  name  of  'adventurer,'  which  pleased  them  so 
much  that  the  definition  stuck  in  their  minds,  and  be- 
came to  them  a  solid  truth.  Many  years  afterward, 
when  the  uncle  was  dead  and  the  cousin,  Mr.  Nathan- 
iel Basevi,  had  withdrawn  from  practice  and  settled 
in  Torquay,  Mr.  Disraeli,  who  had  then  already  been 
once  Prime  Minister,  happened  to  visit  the  watering- 
place.  It  was  strongly  suggested  to  Mr.  Basevi  that, 
Disraeli  having  now  won  his  spurs,  the  old  ill-feeling 
should  be  forgotten,  and  that  he  should  become  rec- 
onciled with  his  successful  cousin.  He  was  even 
given  to  understand  that  Mr.  Disraeli  would  be  not 
only  ready,  but  glad,  to  meet  him  half-way.  But  the 
sturdy  and  obstinate  old  gentleman  would  have  none 
of  it.  He  stuck  to  it  that  'Dizzy'  was  nothing  but 
a  political  adventurer,  and  with  such  a  man,  said  he, 
he  would  have  nothing  to  do;  he  would  neither  call 
upon  him  nor  be  called  upon. 

"Years  after  that  affair,  not  long  after  the  Con- 
gress of  Berlin  and  the  return  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  to 
England  with  'Peace  with  lionor'  in  his  hand,  I  was 
staying  with  my  great-aunt,  Mrs.  Wing,  sister  of  my 
grandmother  and  of  Mr.  George  Basevi  before  men- 
tioned, who  was  then  eighty-two,  and  she  showed  me 

265 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

with  much  pride  a  letter  she  had  received  from  her 
great  cousin.  For  all  that  long  lifetime  she  had  taken 
her  brother's  part;  but,  she  told  me,  'Now  Ben  has 
done  a  really  great  thing,  and  shown  that  he  had  more 
in  him  than  we  any  of  us  thought,  so  when  he  came 
back  from  Berlin  I  thought  I  would  just  write  him  a 
line  of  congratulation;  and  here  is  his  answer!'  It 
was  an  altogether  charming  letter,  beginning  'My 
dear  cousin,'  relating  the  pleasure  of  the  Prime  Min- 
ister at  the  old  lady's  having  remembered  him,  and 
his  gratification  at  his  success  at  Berlin,  and,  if  I  re- 
member rightly,  inquiring  after  certain  members  of 
the  family.  I  am  only  sorry  that  my  recollection  of 
the  terms  of  the  letter  is  so  meager,  though  I  am  cer- 
tain of  its  purport.  Mrs.  Wing  has  long  since  died, 
and  what  became  of  the  letter  I  know  not.  But  I  hope 
that  it  may  be  preserved  somewhere." 

Disraeli  had  no  liking  for  lawyers  as  a  class, 
though  among  them  he  found  fast  friends — Benjamin 
Law-Maker:  Austen,  Solicitor,  and  Lyndhurst,  Lord 
Law-Breaker.  Chancellor,  the  most  helpful  he  had  in 
early  life,  and  Philip  Rose,  faithful  to  the  last.  Not 
improbably  the  uncongenial  drudgery  his  turbulent 
teens  endured  at  the  desk  of  his  father's  lawyers 
sowed  the  prejudice  against  all  that  appertains  to 
John  Doe  and  Richard  Roe;  and,  later,  the  entry  of 
his  name  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  where  he  kept  several 
terms,  since  it  led  to  nothing,  not  even  to  his  being 
"called,"  must  rank  among  the  failures  of  one  to 
whom  failure  was  "hell,"  the  hell  of  an  opportunity 

266 


LAW-MAKER ;   LAW-BREAKER 

once  lost  and  therefore  lost  forever — "eternal  loss." 
Perhaps,  too,  the  cold  eye  turned  upon  his  early — and, 
indeed,  his  later — ambitions  by  his  uncle,  George 
Basevi,  of  the  Parliamentary  Bar,  gave  increase  to 
his  dislike.  He  had  no  doubt  his  own  abandonment  of 
the  "learned  profession,"  as  its  professors  call  it,  in 
his  mind,  and  was  not  innocent  of  a  fling  at  his  uncle, 
when  he  wrote  in  Vivian  Grey:  "The  Bar — pooh!  Law 
and  bad  jokes  till  we  are  forty;  and  then,  with  the 
most  brilliant  success,  the  prospect  of  gout  and  a  cor- 
onet." An  early  acquaintance  formed  during  his  stay 
at  Gibraltar  in  1830  afforded  him  another  expression 
of  spleen.  "The  Judge-Advocate,"  he  said,  "is  that 
Mr.  Baron  Field  who  once  wrote  a  book,  and  whom 
all  the  world  took  for  a  noble;  but  it  turned  out  that 
Baron  was  to  him  what  Thomas  is  to  other  men.  I 
found  him  a  bore  and  vulgar;  a  Storks  without  breed- 
ing; consequently  I  gave  him  a  lecture  on  caves  which 
made  him  stare,  and  he  has  avoided  me  ever  since." 
Then  he  refers  to  a  comparpion  de  voyage  who,  though 
blind,  deaf,  and  dumb,  was  yet  "more  endurable  than 
the  noisy,  obtrusive  jargonic  judge,  who" — says  he, 
going  from  the  particular  to  the  general — "is  a  true 
lawyer,  ever  illustrating  the  obvious,  explaining  the 
evident,  and  expatiating  on  the  commonplace." 

But  the  Bar  of  England  was  not  aware  of  this 
indictment  when,  in  1838,  Disraeli  entered  upon  an 
encounter  with  it,  and  delivered  a  speech,  in  the  mat- 
ter of  it  as  well  as  in  the  circumstances  of  its  delivery, 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  he  ever  made.  Tie  was 
vanquished  then;  but  that  he  had  every  claim  to  vie- 

267 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

tory  will  henceforth  be  the  verdict  of  the  great  jury 
of  his  fellow-countrymen.  Disraeli  had  successfully 
contested  Maidstone  with  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis  in  the 
July  of  1837.  Talk  among  the  beaten  party  about  a 
petition  followed;  but  Disraeli  knew  better.  He  bade 
his  sister  clear  her  head  of  ''all  nonsense"  about  peti- 
tions. "There  is  not  a  safer  seat  in  England  than 
mine.  They  have  not  a  shadow  to  work  on."  The 
event  was  as  good  as  Disraeli's  word;  no  petition  was 
filed.  A  little  later,  the  death  of  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis 
caused  a  vacancy  at  Maidstone,  for  which  Mr.  Fector 
offered  himself,  was  selected,  but  retired  on  a  petition. 
Mr.  Disraeli  had  no  responsibility  for  this  election; 
but  his  name,  according  to  report,  was  dragged 
in  by  Mr.  Austin,^  the  leading  counsel  against  Mr. 
Fector.  In  the  following  letter  Mr.  Disraeli  joined 
issue  with  Mr.  Austin: 

"Maidstone  Election  Committee. 

"T'o  the  Editor  of  the  'Morning  Post.'' 

"Carlton  Club, 

"June  5th  [1838]. 

"Sir:      In    opening   the   case    of   the   petitioners 
against  the  return  of  Mr.  Fector  for  Maidstone,  on 

'  Mr.  Charles  Austin,  of  Brandeston  Hall,  Suffolk,  who  became  in  due 
course  Q C,  J. P.,  chairman  of  Quarter  Sessions,  a  Bencher  of  the  Middle 
Temple,  and  leader  of  the  Parliamentary  Bar,  died  in  December,  1874,  aged 
seventy-five.  He  was  the  son  of  Mr.  Jonathan  Austin,  of  Ipswich,  and  mar- 
ried, in  1856,  Harriet  Jane,  daughter  of  Captain  Ralph  Mitford  Preston  In- 
gilby,  brother  of  Sir  Henry  John  Ingilby,  Bart,,  of  Eipley.  He  had  two 
more  lasting  distinctions — he  lived  to  see  the  young  Parliamentarian  whom 
he  arraigned  Prime  Minister  of  England ;  and  he  shook  the  hand  of  Edward 
FitzGerald,  the  hand  that  did  the  Riihhiyht. 

268 


LAW-MAKER  ;   LAW-BREAKER 

Friday  last,  Mr.  Austin  stated,  that  'Mr.  Disraeli,  at 
the  general  election,  had  entered  into  engagements 
with  the  electors  of  Maidstone,  and  made  pecuniary 
promises  to  them,  which  he  had  left  uufulhlled.' 

"I  should  have  instantly  noticed  this  assertion  of 
the  learned  gentleman,  had  not  a  friend,  to  whose 
opinion  I  was  bound  to  defer,  assured  me  that  Mr. 
Austin,  by  the  custom  of  his  profession,  was  author- 
ized to  make  any  statement  from  his  brief  which  he 
was  prepared  to  substantiate  or  to  attempt  to  sub- 
stantiate. 

''The  inquiry  into  the  last  Maidstone  election  has 
now  terminated,  and  I  take  the  earliest  opportunity 
of  declaring,  and  in  a  manner  the  most  unqualified 
and  unequivocal,  that  the  statement  of  the  learned 
gentleman  is  utterly  false.  There  is  not  the  slightest 
shadow  of  a  foundation  for  it.  I  myself  never  either 
directly  or  indirectly  entered  into  any  pecuniary  en- 
gagements with,  or  made  any  pecuniary  promises  to, 
the  electors  of  Maidstone;  and,  therefore,  I  can  not 
have  broken  any  or  left  any  unfulfilled.  The  w^hole 
expenses  of  the  contest  in  question  were  defrayed  by 
my  lamented  colleague,  and  I  discharged  to  him  my 
moiety  of  those  expenses,  as  is  well  known  to  those 
who  are  entitled  to  any  know^ledge  on  the  subject. 

"Sir,  I  am  informed  that  it  is  quite  useless,  and 
even  unreasonable,  in  me  to  expect  from  Mr.  Austin 
any  satisfaction  for  those  impertinent  calumnies,  be- 
cause Mr.  Austin  is  a  member  of  an  honorable  pro- 
fession, the  first  principle  of  whose  practise  appears 
to  be  that  they  may  say  anything  provided  they  be 
paid  for  it.  The  privilege  of  circulating  falsehood 
with  impunity  is  delicately  described  as  doing  your 
duty  toward  your  client,  which  appears  to  be  a  very 
different  process  to  doing  your  duty  toward  your 
neighbor. 

269 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"This  may  be  the  usage  of  Mr.  Austin's  profession, 
and  it  may  be  the  custom  of  society  to  submit  to  its 
practise,  but  for  my  part,  it  appears  to  me  to  be 
nothing  better  than  a  disgusting  and  intolerable 
tyranny,  and  I,  for  one,  shall  not  bow  to  it  in 
silence. 

"I,  therefore,  repeat  that  the  statement  of  Mr. 
Austin  was  false,  and  inasmuch  as  he  never  attempted 
to  substantiate  it,  I  conclude  that  it  was,  on  his  side, 
but  the  blustering  artifice  of  a  rhetorical  hireling, 
availing  himself  of  the  vile  license  of  a  loose-tongued  ^ 
lawyer,  not  only  to  make  a  statement  which  was  false, 
but  to  make  it  with  a  consciousness  of  its  falsehood. 

"I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  and  faithful  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

Then  all  Lincoln's  Inn  took  counsel  together. 
Here,  indeed,  was  a  slur  cast  upon  the  profession  that 
— alone  among  professions — continually  proclaimed 
itself  "honorable,"  its  members  (until  Mr.  Justice 
Grantham  became  an  exception  to  prove  the  rule)  per- 
petually congratulating  one  another  in  public  on  their 
own  extraordinary  rectitude  and  dignity,  their  wis- 
dom and  their  purity.  Lacking  public  appreciation, 
they  could  at  least  punish  public  depreciation  when, 
as  now,  it  came  in  the  unwary  guise  of  a  technical 
contempt  of  court.  For  this  Disraeli  w^as  indicted. 
One  notes  that  he  could  have  outmatched  them  all  by 
going  down  to  the  House  of  Commons,  where  even  a 
very  young  member  will  enlist  sympathy  on  a  ques- 

'  Happily  it  was  the  alliterative  affinity  of  "law"  and  "loose"  that 
caused  the  same  words  to  reappear  in  conjunction  in  the  last  reference  he 
made  to  lawyers,  nearly  half  a  century  later:  "All  lawyers  are  loose  in  theii 
youth,"  says  Bertie  Tremaine  in  Endymion. 

270 


LAWMAKER  ;   LAW-BREAKER 

tion  of  Privilege.  He  could  have  treated  Mr.  Austin's 
reported  speech  as  a  Breach  of  the  Privilege  of  the 
House;  called  Austin  to  its  Bar;  filled  Austin's  re- 
bellious yet  apparently  acquiescing  ears  (what  a 
different  world  it  would  be,  were  ears  automatically 
expressive  of  truth!)  with  pompous  periods  from  the 
Speaker  about  the  glories  and  virtues  of  the  Com- 
mons. For  the  Commons  and  the  lawyers,  talking 
collectively,  are  pretty  well  equals  in  self-adula- 
tion. 

Disraeli,  however,  dropped  the  conventional  Par- 
liament-man and  appeared  as  only  himself,  in  the  now 
almost  forgotten  case  of  "The  Queen  v.  Disraeli." 
The  Queen  was  as  young  a  Queen  as  he  a  legislator; 
it  was  the  first  time  that  he  saw  together  the  two 
names  that  in  after  years  no  versus  should  disjoin. 
The  defendant  Disraeli  had  no  course  but  to  plead 
guilty,  and  to  appear  in  person  to  pray  the  judgment 
of  the  Court.  The  affidavits  were  duly  read,  and  the 
Attorney-General  rose  to  discharge  w^hat  he,  of 
course,  called  his  "duty"  in  this,  equally  of  course, 
"very  painful  case."  A  painter  or  an  author  fulfils 
his  commission  without  an  allusion  to  his  "duty":  the 
one  to  his  patron,  the  other  to  his  publishers — he  does 
it  honestly.  Doctors  apply  their  skill  with  a  human- 
ity that  loses  nothing  by  its  silence;  while  the  gar- 
dener or  the  groom  who  protests  his  "duty"  instead 
of  speaking  of  his  employment  or  his  job  would  ex- 
cite his  master's  suspicion.  When  barristers  follow 
suit  and  talk  of  retainers  or  instructions,  the  Law 
Courts  will  be  reclaimed  for  candor. 

271 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Disraeli  knew  and  disliked  the  "jargonie"  tongue 
of  "the  gentlemen  of  the  long  robe";  he  disliked  it 
then,  and  he  disliked  it  later  when  he  listened,  in  an- 
other place,  to  Attorneys-General  of  his  own  appoint- 
ing; to  all  the  greedy  "silk"-worms  who  go  to  the 
House  of  Commons  for  the  green  meat  they  can  get: 
they  come;  they  are  fed;  they  go;  they  are  forgotten. 
But  the  Attorney-General  of  1838 — the  future  Lord 
Chancellor  Campbell — is  the  one  Disraeli  now  hears 
mouthing  the  inevitable  word  that  men  misuse  in  the 
Law  Courts,  though  they  are  to  wander  westward 
past  the  monument  of  Nelson:  "Mr.  Austin  has  done 
nothing  more  than  his  duty  to  his  client  strictly  re- 
quired him  to  do." 

What  seems  more  to  the  point  for  the  reader  to- 
day, Mr.  Austin  had  really  never  used  the  words  that 
were  imputed  to  him.  So  said  the  Attorney-General, 
Sir  J.  (afterward  Lord  Chancellor)  Campbell;  who, 
moreover,  showed  his  elevation  of  feeling  by  compli- 
menting the  offender  in  that  "jargon"  of  the  profes- 
sion Disraeli  had  disdainfully  docketed.  "It  gives  me 
most  sincere  [jargonic]  regret  to  see  a  gentleman  of 
the  [jargonic]  respectability  and  talent  of  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli standing  on  the  floor  of  the  court  to  receive  the 
sentence  of  your  [jargonic]  lordships."  Again:  "I 
think  he  would  not  have  done  anything  inconsistent 
with  that  high  character  for  honor  which  he  has  ever 
borne  if  he  had  without  hesitation  expressed  regret 
for  the  letter  he  had  written."  The  attorney  could 
not  have  been  more  civil  had  he  foreseen  in  the  hap- 
less defendant  the  future  dispenser  of  the  Woolsack. 

272 


LAW-MAKER  ;    LAW-BREAKER 

No  doubt  it  was  public  policy  to  let  the  criminal  off 
lightly,  so  that  the  crime  was  admitted;  for  j)ublic 
opinion  was  not  unmindful  of  the  issue  raised.  Sir 
F.  Pollock  and  Sir  W.  Follett,  both  of  whom  held  the 
oflfice  of  Attorney-General  in  the  ensuing  Tory  Admin- 
istration, were  ranged  with  the  Attorney-General— a 
formidable  array  against  a  layman;  but  they  modestly 
refrained  from  offering  any  observations.  Then  Mr. 
Disraeli,  environed,  and  with  nothing  to  do  but  sub- 
mit to  the  foregone  conclusion,  made  perforce  his 
Galileo-like  submission: 

"I  will  for  a  short  time  avail  myself  of  the  permis- 
sion of  the  Bench  to  offer  some  observations  which 
may  induce  it  to  visit  this  misdemeanor  in  a  spirit  of 
leniency.  I  stand  before  the  Court  confessedly  guilty, 
not  from  any  dislike  to  enter  into  an  investigation  of 
the  circumstances  which  have  induced  me  to  commit 
this  trespass,  but  because  I  have  been  advised  that, 
whatever  the  moral  effect  might  be,  the  legal  effect 
could  be  but  one — namely,  a  conviction.  I  thought 
that,  under  all  these  circumstances,  it  would  not  be 
decorous  by  a  prolonged  litigation  to  resist  the  un- 
questionable result,  nor  was  I  anxious  to  deprive  my 
honorable,  my  learned  antagonist  of  an  earlier  ter- 
mination of  the  impending  issue.  It  would  be  affecta- 
tion in  me  to  pretend  that  the  (I  will  say,  unfortunate) 
letter  which  has  originated  these  proceedings  was 
written  for  the  atmosphere  of  Westminster  Hall,  but 
I  believe  if  the  data  of  the  supposed  facts  upon  which 
this  letter  has  been  published  had  been  correct,  my 
offense  by  the  law  would  have  been  the  same.  Yet, 
19  273 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

under  these  circumstances,  I  should  have  applied  with 
some  confidence  to  your  lordships — not  as  administra- 
tors of  the  law,  but  as  members  of  the  great  social 
body — to  look  upon  that  transgression  not  only  with 
mercy,  but  with  special  indulgence;  and  it  is  my  wish 
to  place  the  feelings  and  circumstances  that  induced 
me  to  write  the  letter  before  the  Court,  that  I  prevail 
on  your  lordships  even  now  to  look  at  my  offense  in 
the  same  spirit. 

"The  learned  Attorney-General  has  stated  that 
this  misconception  arose  from  a  report  in  a  public 
newspaper — in  a  report  of  a  speech  alleged  to  have 
been  delivered  before  a  Parliamentary  tribunal.  That 
report  had  contained  allegations  against  my  char- 
acter and  conduct  of  no  common  severity.  I  was 
accused  of  having  bribed  the  constituency  whom  it 
was  my  honor  to  represent,  and  afterward  having  left 
unfulfilled  the  promise  by  which  I  had  induced  them  to 
give  me  their  suffrages.  This  accusation  was  of  a  most 
grievous  character — an  accusation  of  public  corrup- 
tion and  private  dishonesty — and  I  hope  your  lord- 
ships will  for  a  moment  consider  the  feelings  of  a  man 
not  very  old  and  experienced  in  public  life,  when  he 
found  an  accusation  of  this  kind  made  by  a  learned 
member  of  the  Bar  before  a  public  tribunal  of  the 
country;  and  although  I  had  not  immediately 
adopted  the  authenticity  of  that  report,  yet  I  submit 
that  though  it  was  possible  the  insult  might  not 
have  been  intended,  the  injury  had  already  been  ex- 
perienced, for  the  report  appeared  in  the  evening 
papers,  appeared  the  next  morning  in  the  morning 

274 


LAW-MAKER ;   LAW-RllEAKER 

papers,  and  had  been  copied  into  perliaps  every  pro- 
vincial paper  throughout  the  kingdom.  I  confess  my 
feelings  at  that  moment  were  considerably  excited. 
I  had  lived  to  learn  by  experience  that  calumny  once 
circulated  is  more  or  less  forever  current.  You  might 
explain  the  misapprehension  and  you  might  convict 
the  falsehood,  but  there  is  indeed  an  immortal  spirit 
in  mendacity  which  at  times  is  most  difficult  to  cope 
with,  and  most  dangerous  to  meet;  and  I  confess  when 
I  adverted  to  the  serious  injury  I  had  already  expe- 
rienced, and  observing  also  that  there  were  no  char- 
acteristics which  might  induce  me  to  doubt  the  au- 
thenticity of  the  report,  I  felt  myself  writhing  under 
feelings  which  I  regret  to  remember. 

"But  I  did  not  commit  an  act  of  such  rash  pre- 
cipitancy as  to  write  a  libel  upon  a  newspaper  re- 
port. I  took  steps  to  ascertain  its  accuracy  or  inac- 
curacy; I  applied  to  a  member  of  that  tribunal  before 
which  the  speech  had  been  delivered.  I  found  him 
rather  a  reluctant  communicant,  but  he  explicitly  de- 
clared that  the  report  was  accurate.  Under  those 
circumstances  I  happened  to  meet  an  eminent  mem- 
ber of  the  Bar,  and  one  well  versed  in  proceedings 
before  the  House  of  Commons.  I  mentioned  to  him 
the  grievance  under  which  I  labored,  and  the  abso- 
lute necessity  of  my  taking  some  steps  to  put  a  ter- 
mination to  the  matter;  and  I  had  parted  with  the,  I 
confess,  unfortunate  impression  that  any  applica- 
tion to  a  member  of  the  Bar  would  be  fruitless;  and 
indeed,  if  he  desired  to  give  me  any  satisfaction,  it 
could  not  be  applied  for  until  I  had  given  him  an 

275 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

opportunity  of  proving  the  accusation  he  had  made. 
I  had  waited  in  consequence,  although  it  was  more 
due  to  my  constituents  than  to  myself  that  some  im- 
mediate steps  should  be  taken — I  w^aited  until  the 
proceedings  terminated — as  I  subsequently  learned, 
abruptly  terminated;  but  in  the  interval  I  had 
spoken  without  reserve  to  those  w^ho  attended  com- 
mittees, that  it  might  reach  the  ears  of  the  learned 
gentleman,  and  I  regret  to  think  it  had  not  produced 
some  explanation  which  would  have  rendered  the  step 
I  had  afterward  taken  unnecessary.  When  I  found 
those  proceedings  had  terminated,  and  when  I  felt 
that  during  the  delay  the  accusation  had  rendered  me 
unfit  for  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  un- 
worthy of  any  position  in  society — that  the  attack 
had  been  circulated  in  every  possible  way  throughout 
the  Empire — I  found  it  necessary  to  take  a  step  which 
should  cope  with  the  calumny,  and  which  should  be 
decisive. 

"Two  courses  alone  were  open  to  me.  I  might 
have  gone  down  to  my  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  might  have  treated  it  as  a  breach  of  privilege. 
I  might  have  made  the  observations  I  afterward 
wrote,  and,  as  your  lordships  know,  I  might  have  done 
so  there  with  impunity;  but  I  had  a  wish  not  to  shield 
myself  under  my  privilege.  Late  at  night  I  wrote  this 
unfortunate  letter,  and  sent  it  instantly  to  all  the 
newspapers.  The  Attorney-General  seemed  to  think 
this  an  aggravation,  but  your  lordships  would  not 
have  had  me  publish  a  libel  in  only  one  paper,  which 
the  party  might  not  read,  and  might  only  hear  of  the 

276 


LAW-MAKER ;   LAW-BREAKER 

libel  from  others.  I  had  thought  the  better  mode  was 
to  publish  it  in  all,  that  it  should  be  made  public  by 
every  means. 

"I  am  not  here  to  defend  the  language  of  that  let- 
ter as  regards  any  individuals  or  bodies  who  may  be 
referred  to  in  that  composition,  but  I  mention  the 
haste  with  which  the- article  was  published,  because 
there  is  a  common  impression  that  everything  that 
appears  in  print  is  necessarily  composed  with  the  ad- 
vantage of  great  reflection,  and  even  of  revision;  but 
I  will  venture  to  repeat,  that  a  public  journalist 
writes  under  the  same  feelings,  and  subject  to  the 
same  feelings,  as  persons  addressing  popular  assem- 
blies, and  often  regrets  in  the  morning  what  he  has 
committed  to  paper  the  previous  night.  I  have  not 
the  slightest  wish  to  vindicate  the  language  of  that 
letter,  even  to  save  myself  from  the  perils  and  punish- 
ments that  may  now  await  me.  I  did  not  consider 
that  the  system  of  bribery  spoken  of  by  Mr.  Austin 
prevailed  in  any  borough,  certainly  it  did  not  in  Maid- 
stone. I  did  not  mean  to  say  that  when  a  new  elec- 
tion takes  place  there,  all  parties  might  consider 
themselves  properly  remunerated  for  their  labor.  If 
a  man  had  the  purse  of  Croesus  and  the  primitive  lib- 
erality of  Timon,  there  must  be  some  persons  dissat- 
isfied; but  there  is  a  very  important  point  to  which 
I  will  call  your  lordships'  attention:  admitting  there 
was  such  a  system — I  moan  no  reflection  on  the 
learned  gentleman,  but  T  must  say  the  introduction 
of  my  name  was  most  grievous  and  most  unwar- 
ranted." 

277 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Mr.  Disraeli  then  stated  the  circumstance  of  the 
Maidstone  election,  and  proceeded: 

"After  I  had  found  I  had  written  a  letter,  prob- 
ably too  violent  even  if  the  supposed  attack  had  been 
made,  and  one  which  was  not  warranted  by  the  words 
that  were  used,  I  took  every  step  that  a  man  of  hon- 
or— that  a  man  who  wished  not  only  to  be  just,  but 
most  generous — could  adopt.  I  can  only  say  that 
from  the  time  your  lordships  graciously  threw  out 
your  suggestion,  anxious  as  I  am  at  all  times  not  to 
seem  to  avoid  the  consequences  of  my  conduct,  wise 
or  unwise,  right  or  wrong,  I  have  done  everything  in 
my  power  to  accomplish  that  suggestion.  I  appeared 
against  the  rule  of  my  counsel,  and  intimated  my  in- 
tention to  two  distinguished  members  of  the  Bar, 
one  of  whom  was  the  honorable  member  for  Liv- 
erpool. My  learned  counsel  did  not  come  into  the 
court  with  his  hands  tied.  I  had  given  him  no  limita- 
tion as  to  what  was  proper  to  be  done,  except  his  own 
conscience.  I  had  told  him  to  act  for  me  as  for  him- 
self, knowing  that  he  would  not  put  me  in  a  false  posi- 
tion, and  my  honorable  friend  had  said  on  that  occa- 
sion everything  which  he  thought  a  gentleman  should 
say,  or  that  another  gentleman  should  have  expected. 
He  might  have  been  unfortunate  in  the  result,  and 
might  not  have  conveyed  all  that  he  had  intended,  or 
all  that  he  wished,  but  I  am  sure  my  friend  had  wished 
to  convey  all  that  I  wish  to  convey  now,  and  he  did 
not  do  it  in  a  niggard  spirit. 

"It  is  enough  that  I  have  injured  a  gentleman  who 
was  unknown  to  me,  it  is  enough  that  I  have  outraged 

278 


LAW-MAKER;   LAW-BREAKi:U 

his  feelings  and  treated  him  with  injustice,  but  I  hope 
not  with  injury.  I  regret  what  I  have  done.  I  not 
only  regret,  but  feel  great  mortification  for  what  I 
have  done.  I  am  sorry  I  should  have  injured  the  feel- 
ings of  any  man  who  had  not  attempted  to  injure  me. 
I  am  sorry  that,  through  misconception,  I  should  have 
said  anything  that  could  for  a  moment  have  annoyed 
the  mind  of  a  gentleman  of  the  highest  honor  and 
integrity.  I  should  myself  be  satisfied  with  that  ex- 
pression of  deep  regret  and  mortification.  But,  my 
lords,  from  the  manner  in  which  this  declaration  is 
couched,  from  several  expressions  that  have  fallen  at 
various  times  during  these  proceedings,  from  the  ani- 
mus which  has  characterized  them  within  and  with- 
out these  walls,  I  can  not  help  fearing  that  I  am 
brought  here  by  one  of  those  fictions  of  law  of  which 
1  have  read,  and  it  is  not  so  much  for  an  offense 
against  the  law  as  an  offense  against  lawyers  that  I 
am  now  awaiting  judgment.  My  lords,  under  those 
circumstances  I  shall  appeal  with  confidence  to  the 
Bench  for  protection.  I  am  sure,  my  lords,  you  will 
never  allow  me  to  be  formally  arraigned  for  one  of- 
fense and  virtually  punished  for  another.  Mj  lords, 
I  am  not  desirous  of  vindicating  the  expressions  used 
in  that  letter  in  reference  to  the  profession,  any  more 
than  the  expressions  used  in  reference  to  the  individ- 
ual. My  lords,  I  thought  the  profession  had  attacked 
me,  and  I  wished  to  show  them  that  there  might  be  a 
blot  in  their  escutcheon.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  say- 
ing that  my  opinion  of  the  Bar  of  England  in  my 
cooler  moments  can  not  be  very  different  from  that  of 

279 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

any  man  of  sense  and  study.  I  must,  of  course,  recog- 
nize it  as  a  very  important  portion  of  the  social  com- 
monwealth— one,  indeed,  of  the  lustiest  limbs  of  the 
body  politic;  I  know,  my  lords,  to  arrive  at  eminence 
in  that  profession  requires,  if  not  the  highest,  many 
of  the  higher  qualities  of  our  nature;  that  to  gain 
any  station  there  needs  great  industry,  great  learn- 
ing, and  great  acuteness.  I  can  not  forget  that  from 
the  Bar  of  England  have  sprung  many  of  our  most 
illustrious  statesmen,  past  and  present;  and  all  must 
feel,  my  lords,  that  to  the  Bar  we  owe  those  adminis- 
trators of  justice  to  whose  unimpassioned  wisdom  we 
appeal  with  the  confidence  which  I  do  now.  But,  my 
lords,  I  have  ever  believed,  I  believe  at  this  moment 
— I  see  no  libel  in  the  expression  of  that  belief,  no 
want  of  taste  under  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  in 
expressing  it  even  here — that  there  is  in  the  princi- 
ples on  which  the  practise  of  the  Bar  is  based  a  taint 
or  arrogance,  I  will  not  say  audacity,  but  of  that 
reckless  spirit  which  is  the  necessary  consequence 
of  the  possession  and  the  exercise  of  irresponsible 
power. 

"My  lords,  I  am  told,  and  have  been  told  often  in 
the  course  of  these  proceedings,  that  I  have  mistaken 
the  nature  of  the  connection  that  subsists  between 
the  counsel  and  the  client,  and  of  the  consequent  priv- 
ileges that  accrue  from  it.  It  may  be  so,  but  I  have 
at  least  adopted  that  opinion  after  some  literary,  if 
not  legal,  research.  The  question  is  one  indeed  of 
great  delicacy  and  great  difficulty;  it  has  been  mooted 
on  various  occasions,  at  various  intervals,  during  our 

280 


LAW-MAKER ;   LAW-BREAKER 

late  annals;  it  has  been  discussed  by  very  learned  law- 
yers, it  has  been  illustrated  by  very  profound  anti- 
quaries, legal  and  constitutional;  has  been  made  sub- 
ject-matter for  philosophical  moralists,  and  even 
touched  by  the  pleasantry  of  poignant  wits.  I  con- 
fess that  I  myself  have  imbibed  an  opinion  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  a  counsel  to  his  client  to  assist  him  by  all 
possible  means,  just  or  unjust,  and  even  to  commit, 
if  necessary,  a  crime  for  his  assistance  or  extrication. 
My  lords,  this  may  be  an  outrageous  opinion;  but,  my 
lords,  it  is  not  my  own.  Allow  me  to  read  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  duty  of  a  counsel  to  a  client,  and  by  a 
great  authority:  'An  advocate,  by  the  sacred  duty 
which  he  owes  his  client,  knows  in  the  discharge  of 
his  duty  but  one  person  in  the  world — that  client  and 
none  other.  To  save  that  client  by  all  expedient 
means;  and  to  protect  that  client  at  all  hazards  and 
costs  to  all  others,  and  among  those  others  to  himself, 
is  the  highest  and  most  unquestioned  of  his  duties; 
and  he  must  not  regard  the  alarm,  the  sufferings,  the 
torment,  the  destruction  which  he  may  bring  upon 
any  other.  In  the  spirit  of  duty,  he  must  go  on  reck- 
less, even  if  his  fate  unhappily  should  be  to  involve  his 
country  in  confusion.' 

"Here,  my  lords,  is  a  sketch,  and  by  a  great  master; 
here,  my  lords,  is  the  rationale  of  the  duties  of  an  ad- 
vocate, and  drawn  up  by  a  Lord  Chancellor.  In  this, 
my  lords,  is  the  idea  of  those  duties  expressed,  before 
the  highest  tribunal  of  the  country,  by  the  Attorney- 
General  of  a  Queon  of  England.  According  to  this 
high  authority,  it  is  the  duty  of  a  counsel,  for  his 

281 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

client,  even  to  commit  treason.  If  then,  my  lords,  I 
have  erred  in  my  estimate  of  the  extent  of  these 
duties,  it  can  not  be  said,  my  lords,  that  I  have  erred 
without  authority.  Nor  can  this  be  considered  as  the 
extravagance  of  a  mere  rhetorical  ebullition.  My 
lords,  I  read  this  passage  from  an  edition  of  the  speech 
just  published  by  the  noble  orator,  who,  satisfied 
with  the  fame  that  it  has  so  long  enjoyed,  now  deems 
it  worthy  of  the  immortality  of  his  own  revision,  and 
has  just  published  this  description  unaltered,  after 
twenty  years'  reflection,  and  with  its  most  important 
portions  printed  in  capital  letters.  And,  my  lords,  I 
ask  is  there  any  member  of  this  Bar  who  has  had  any 
experience,  who  has  had  any  substantial  practise,  any 
sway  of  business — my  lords,  I  will  say  more,  is  there 
any  member  of  this  profession,  I  care  not  how  noble 
his  nature  or  name,  how  serene  his  present  mind  or 
exalted  his  present  station — who  can  say  that  in  the 
course  of  a  long  career,  in  which  this  responsible 
power  has  been  exercised,  there  have  not  been  in- 
stances when  the  memory  of  its  employment  has  not 
occasioned  him  deep  regret  and  lengthened  vexation? 
My  lords,  I  have  done.  I  leave  my  case  with  confi- 
dence to  your  merciful  consideration,  briefiy  recapit- 
ulating the  points  on  which  I  have  attempted  to  put 
myself  fairly  before  the  Bench  and  the  public.  As  to 
my  offense  against  the  law,  I  throw  myself  on  your 
lordships'  mercy;  as  to  my  offense  against  the  individ- 
ual, I  have  made  him  that  reparation  which  a  gentle- 
man should,  under  the  circumstances,  cheerfully  offer, 
and  with  which  a  gentleman  should,  in  my  opinion, 

282 


LAW-MAKER  ;    LAW-BREAKER 

be  cheerfully  content.  I  make  this,  my  lords,  not  to 
avoid  the  consequences  of  my  conduct,  for  right  or 
wrong,  good  or  bad,  those  consequences  I  am  ever 
ready  to  encounter;  but  because  I  am  anxious  to 
soothe  the  feelings  v^hich  I  have  unjustly  injured,  and 
evince  my  respect  to  the  suggestions  of  the  Bench. 
But  as  to  my  offense  against  the  Bar,  I  do  with  the 
utmost  confidence  appeal  to  your  lordships,  however 
you  may  disapi^rove  of  my  opinions,  however  objec- 
tionable, however  offensive,  even  however  odious  they 
may  be  to  you,  that  you  will  not  permit  me  to  be 
arraigned  for  one  offense  and  punished  for  another. 
In  a  word,  my  lords,  it  is  to  the  Bench  I  look  with  con- 
fidence to  shield  me  from  the  vengeance  of  an  irri- 
tated and  powerful  profession." 

The  learned  judges  having  consulted  together  for 
some  minutes,  the  Attorney-General  rose  and  asked 
permission  to  address  their  lordships. 

"Mr.  Disraeli,"  he  said,  "had  stated  that  he  had 
given  his  learned  counsel  instructions,  on  showing 
cause,  to  do  whatever  that  counsel  should  think 
proper;  and  Mr.  Disraeli  had,  in  the  concluding  part 
of  his  address,  made,  as  it  seemed  to  him  (the  Attor- 
ney-General) and  to  his  friends  Sir  F.  Pollock  and  Sir 
W.  Follett,  an  ample  apology;  he  had  said  that  he  had 
no  desire  to  injure  the  feelings  of  Mr.  Austin,  and  had 
expressed  his  deep  mortification  and  regret  for  the 
language  he  had  used.  If  such  a  concession  had  been 
made  before  the  application,  their  lordships  never 
would  have  been  troubled  with  it.  If  their  lordships 
were  now  of  opinion  that  the  ample  apology  Mr.  Dis- 

283 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

raeli  had  made  ought  to  be  satisfactory,  Mr.  Austin 
was  satisfied." 

The  fight  was  now  over;  but  there  remained  a  few 
parleyings  among  people  of  self-importance: 

Lord  Denman:  "Then  I  understand  you  to  say, 
that  in  consequence  of  the  satisfactory  terms  of  that 
apology,  you  do  not  feel  called  upon  to  pray  for  judg- 
ment on  the  defendant,  provided  we  think  we  can, 
with  any  degree  of  propriety,  pass  over  his  offense 
unpunished?  " 

The  Attorney-General  having  replied  affirmative- 
ly. Lord  Denman  said:  "The  prayer  for  judgment 
having  been  withdrawn,  it  is  infinitely  more  to  the 
satisfaction  of  the  Court  that  the  matter  should 
rest  on  reparation  and  af)ology,  than  that  the  law 
should  be  put  in  force  against  a  person  who  has 
now  made  them.  We  must  take  them  to  be  most 
ample  and  satisfactory  after  the  application  now 
made,  and  this  matter  will  be  considered  at  an 
end." 

"Mr.  Disraeli  then  withdrew." 

(One  imagines  the  reporter  accented  the  "then" — 
Galileo  Disraeli  really  did  withdraw  this  time!) 

But  no,  not  altogether  was  that  strange  episode 
at  an  end.  It  is  not  ended  even  now.  A  writer  in  the 
press  at  the  time  declared:  "The  principle  on  which 
Mr.  Disraeli  has  acted  in  manfully  coming  forward  is 
just  and  proper,  to  arraign  and  condemn  an  unwar- 
rantable and  usurped  privilege  of  a  body  of  men  who 
arrogate  to  themselves  an  exclusive  right  to  launch 
out  calumnies  upon  persons  in  their  presence  or  in 

2S4 


rUBLIC   OPINION    ABUSED 

their  absence."  That  sentiment  has  been  echoed  ever 
since,  and  has  found  almost  official  expression  from 
the  Bar  Council  of  late;  so  that  when,  in  the  good 
time  coming — those  palmy  days  that  will  yet  have 
dates — the  victory  of  that  Justice  from  whom  the 
Court  takes  its  name  becomes  the  common  and  domi- 
nant desire  of  opposing  counsel — not  the  winning  of 
the  case,  not  personal  nor  the  client's  success — Dis- 
raeli may  be  accorded  the  statue  of  a  valiant  and,  for 
all  his  submission,  an  unvanquished  legal  reformer, 
the  pioneer  who  got  the  nasty  buffets  that  the  front 
line  must  ever  encounter. 

What  may  be  called  the  first  letter  of  Disraeli's 

to  find  its  way  into  a  high  political  memoir  was  that 

which    he   addressed    to    the    third   Lord 

"That  Public 

Opinion  which  Londonderry  concerning  the  career  of  his 
has  been  too     famous  brother.    Hitherto  Disraeli's  pub- 

long  Abused. 

lie  letters  had  been  a  sort  of  popular  as- 
sembly letters;  here  was  one,  in  theme  and  style, 
accredited  to  the  House  of  Lords.  The  Memoirs  and 
Correspondence  of  Viscount  Castlereagh,  Second  Marquis  of 
Londonderry,  were  published  in  1848;  and  Disraeli 
must  have  turned  with  something  more  than  curios- 
ity to  p.  132  of  the  first  volume,  where,  between  letters 
from  Aberdeen  and  Sir  James  Graham,  and  closely 
following  another  from  Peel,  his  own  was  printed — 
the  first  of  the  long  series  that  must  finally  appear  in 
the  great  political  human  documents  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  was  addressed  to  Castlereagh's  brother 
and  biographer,  he  having  written  a  "Letter  to  Lord 

285 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Brougham"  (a  flimsy  critic  of  Castlereagh),  and  hav- 
ing sent  a  copy  of  it  to  Disraeli: 

"July  2ith,  1839. 

"My  dear  Lord:  I  have  just  read  your  letter 
to  Lord  Brougham,  and  I  can  not  deny  myself  the 
sincere  pleasure  of  congratulating  you  on  the  pub- 
lication of  what  is  not  only  a  very  spirited  yet  digni- 
fied vindication  of  your  eminent  relative's  memory, 
but  is  an  extremely  interesting  and  valuable  contri- 
bution to  our  political  and  historical  literature.  The 
style  is  worthy  of  the  theme — fluent,  yet  sustained — 
and  the  sarcasm  polished  and  most  felicitous. 

"It  will  make  a  considerable  sensation;  and,  if  only 
for  the  original  documents  which  it  contains,  will 
often  be  referred  to.  I  assure  you,  my  dear  lord,  I 
can  not  easily  express  with  what  entire  satisfaction 
I  have  perused  this  well-timed  appeal  to  that  public 
opinion  which  has  been  too  long  abused  on  the  char- 
acter and  career  of  a  great  statesman. 

"I  am,  my  dear  lord,  ever  your  obliged  and  faithful 

"B.  Disraeli." 

Not  without  bearing  on  Disraeli's  own  history  are 
one  or  two  passages  to  be  found  in  close  conjunction 
to  his  letters  in  the  Memoirs  of  this  statesman,  vilified 
in  life,  appreciated  after  death.  "He  was  a  man," 
writes  one,  "of  fixed  principles  and  ideas;  and  hence 
the  hatred  with  which  he  was  regarded  and  the  abuse 
which  the  rabble  heaped  upon  him.  Had  he  yielded, 
had  he  withdrawn,  he  might  have  escaped  the  malig- 
nant calumnies  incessantly  poured  forth  against  him; 
but  his  character  was  too  noble  for  concession  when 
he  felt  that  his  course  was  right,  and  in  the  end  his 
ideas  triumphed."    "You  well  know,"  writes  another, 

286 


«A   TRAGEDY!   AND   ONE   FOR   YOU" 

and  this  was  Sir  Robert  Peel,  "that  no  vindication  of 
your  brother's  memory  was  necessary  for  my  satis- 
faction— that  my  admiration  for  his  character  is  too 
firmly  rooted  to  be  shaken  by  criticisms  of  phrases  and 
cavils  at  particular  acts  selected  from  a  long  political  ca- 
reery  Sir  Robert's  refusal  to  judge  by  isolated  epi- 
sodes of  Castlereagh's  completed  career  may  suggest 
perhaps  the  verdict  which,  had  he  lived  longer,  he  had 
haply  passed  on  Lord  Beaconsfield's  own. 

To  Lady  Lyndhurst. 

[End  of  IS39.] 

"My  dear  Lady:     Lo!  another  Tragedy!  and  one 
for  you.    Pray  do  not  forget  that  you  and  Miss  Copley 
A  Tragedy !    bave  kindly  promised  to  dine  with  us  on 
and  one  for       Tuesday. 

y°"-"  "We  have  engaged  the  Tankervilles, 

Mr.  Hope,  etc.,  to  have  the  honor  of  meeting  the  High 
Steward  on  Thursday,  and  tell  Miss  Copley  I  will  sum- 
mon some  beaux  worthy  of  her. 

"Your  Ladyship's  faithful  servant, 

"Dis." 

This  was  the  first  of  the  Disraelis'  "little  dinners" 
after  their  marriage.  But  it  was  not  the  invitation 
that  was  a  tragedy  for  his  correspondent,  as  might  be 
heartily  supposed.  With  the  letter  went  a  volume, 
The  Dane,  which  its  author,  Mrs.  Gore,  had  asked  him 
to  give  to  Lord  Lyndhurst  (then  the  newly  elected 
High  Sheriff  of  Cambridge  University).  "Lo,  another 
Tragedy!  and  one  for  you!"  Mrs.  Gore's  tragedy  rather 
closely  followed  Alarcos,  which  Colburn  had  been  ad- 
vertising as  "Mr.  Disraeli's  Tragedy."     The  "one  for 

287 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

you"  is  one  of  the  rare  touches  of  a  witty  discrimina- 
tion to  be  found  in  the  hurried  notes  he  wrote.  Of 
Disraeli's  friendship  with  Lord  Lyndhurst  and  his 
acquaintance  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gore,  something  is 
elsewhere  said.  But  a  word  may  be  added  of  Lady 
Lyndhurst,  who  outlived  all  the  men  and  other  women 
now  named  and  in  the  twentieth  century  moved  in 
flesh  and  blood  among  the  ghosts  who  inhabited  her 
London  drawing-room  from  more  than  six  decades 
earlier.  She  was  married  to  the  Lord  Chancellor  in 
the  year  of  Queen  Victoria's  accession.  The  event 
was  a  nine-days'  wonder;  for  Lord  Lyndhurst  was  the 
best  dressed  man  of  his  day  (and  D'Orsay's);  and,  be- 
sides his  personal  popularity,  had  a  political  im- 
portance far  greater  than  any  Lord  Chancellor  has 
since  possessed.  His  bride's  maiden  name  was 
Georgiana  Goldsmith.  Disraeli  was  a  shrewd  ob- 
server of  woman,  and  the  impression  made  upon  him 
by  Lady  Lj^ndhurst,  whom  he  first  met  at  a  party  at 
Lady  Salisbury's,  was  entirely  favorable.  "Without 
being  absolutely  pretty,"  he  said,  "her  appearance  is 
highly  interesting.  She  is  very  little,  but  elegant  and 
delicate.  She  was  most  becomingly  dressed  in  a 
white  turban" — and  what  else  he  does  not  specify. 
Lady  Lyndhurst  became  a  most  successful  entertain- 
er, and  all  the  familiar  forebodings  about  the  failure 
of  marriages  made  between  an  old  man  and  a  young 
woman  were,  in  her  case,  utterly  falsified.  She  kept 
her  husband's  memory  sacred,  wearing  her  widow's 
weeds  for  nearly  forty  years.  Lady  Lyndhurst  it  was 
who,  at  one  of  her  own  evening  parties,  introduced 

288 


DISRAELI,   DEBTOR 

Dizzy  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  a  memorable  en- 
counter: "He  accorded  me  a  most  gracious  and 
friendly  reception."  At  Lady  Lyndhurst's  table,  too, 
Disraeli  met  Daniel  Webster.  American  statesmen 
were  then  rarer  visitors  to  this  country  than  they  now 
are.  "He  seemed  to  me  a  complete  Brother  Jonathan 
— a  remarkable  twang,  as  /?/rannical,  and  all  that;  he 
also  goes  to  the  levee."  Dizzy,  nevertheless,  notes  the 
American  orator's  "fine  brow  and  beetled,  deep-set 
eyes";  though  he  unluckily  left  it  to  S3^dney  Smith  to 
declare  that  no  man  could  be  so  wise  as  Daniel 
Webster  looked. 

A  man  of  genius  (and  of  debts)  who  was  presented 
to  Disraeli  in  Whitehall,  and  on  whose  arm  the  Chief 
Disraeli,  leaned  for  some  steps,  exclaimed,  "If  my 

Debtor.  creditors  could  only  see  me  now!"     Dis- 

raeli said:  "They  never  do — you  meet  them  only 
when  you  are  carrying  a  parcel,  or  are  caught  in  a 
shower  with  no  umbrella — an  apparatus,  by  the  way, 
that  I  refuse  to  support." 

Disraeli,  who  had  experienced  most  things,  had 
suffered  in  earlier  life  the  cares  of  pecuniary  pressure. 
The  future  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  with  his 
budget  of  millions,  had  himself  to  think  twice  before 
he  left  his  door  lest  judgments  should  be  served  upon 
him.  At  his  Maidstone  election  the  town  had  been 
placarded  with  documents  of  the  sort;  and  Disraeli, 
to  tide  over  his  difficulties,  was  obliged  to  have  re- 
course to  an  issue  of  what  may  be  called  Disraeli 
Bonds.  Gradually,  as  the  years  went  and  fortune 
20  289 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

moderately  came,  he  paid  off  all  the  liabilities  in- 
curred by  the  electoral  struggles  of  his  youth. 

Mrs.  Blackwood,  the  first  Earl  of  Dufferin's 
mother,  asked  Disraeli  the  Younger  to  bring  his  father 
to  see  her:  which  he  delayed  doing  in  consequence  of 
some  pecuniary  difficulties  that  (according  to  Lord 
Dufferin)  momentarily  estranged  him  from  his  father 
— the  "too  indulgent  sire"  of  the  Home  Letters.  When 
the  old  and  young  Disraeli  did  appear,  Benjamin  said 
he  had  been  reconciled  to  his  father  (this  is  Lord 
Dufferin's  story),  the  treaty  being  that  he  should 
bring  his  father  to  Mrs.  Blackwood,  and  that  his 
father  should  pay  his  debts. 

Disraeli's  opinion  of  Mrs.  Blackwood  on  first  meet- 
her  at  her  sister  Mrs.  Norton's  was: 

"Mrs.  Blackwood,  also  very  handsome  and  very 
Sheridanic:  she  told  me  she  was  nothing.  ^You  see, 
Georgy's  the  beauty'  (Lady  St.  Maur),  'and  Carry's  the 
wit'  (Mrs.  Norton),  'and  I  ought  to  be  the  good  one, 
but  then  I  am  not.'  I  must  say  I  liked  her  exceed- 
ingly; besides,  she  knows  all  my  works  by  heart,  and 
spouts  whole  pages  of  F.  G.  [^'\vian  Grey]  and  C.  F. 
[Contarini  Fleming]  and  the  Y.  D.  [Young  Duke].  In 
the  evening  came  the  beauty.  Lady  St.  Maur,  and 
anything  so  splendid  I  never  gazed  upon.  Even  the 
handsomest  family  in  the  world,  which  I  think  the 
Sheridans  are,  all  looked  dull.  Clusters  of  the  dark- 
est hair,  the  most  brilliant  complexion,  a  contour  of 
face  perfectly  ideal.  In  the  evening  Mrs.  Norton  sang 
and  acted,  and  did  everything  that  was  delightful." 

In  contrast  with  Disraeli's  sweet  and  witty  impres- 

290 


UNPARLIAIMENTAUY    lULLS 

tion  of  this  mother  aud  these  aunts,  Lord  Dufferin, 
their  sou  aud  uephew,  late  in  life,  put  on  paper,  dully, 
only  one  reminiscence  of  the  dead  Minister  by  whom, 
politics  apart,  he  had  been  promoted  and  petted, 
surely  a  little  for  the  sake  of  those  "ladies  of  yester- 
year." Strange  that  his  solitary  reminiscence  should 
be  a  squalid  one;  it  related  to  Disraeli's  pecuniary 
embarrassments  and  to  family  complications  that  he 
(and  he  alone)  says  resulted  therefrom.  Disraeli  the 
Younger  was  asked  to  bring  Disraeli  the  Elder  to  one 
of  these  ladies;  and  did  so  only  after  a  delay  due  to  an 
estrangement  between  father  and  son  caused  by  the 
son's  debts.  Alas!  when  Lord  Dufferin  so  wrote,  the 
Nemesis  that  guards  the  memories  of  the  great  was 
all  too  near. 

To  a  Financial  Agent. 

"Carlton  Club, 

''March  16th,  1842. 

"My  dear  Sir:  The  hopeless  illness  of  Mrs.  Dis- 
raeli's mother  has  prevented  me  from  being  a 
Unpariiamen-  Continuous  week  in  London  since  my 
tary  Bills.  return  to  England;  but  I  have  not  neg- 
lected your  affairs. 

"I  was  not  aware  that  you  held  any  presentable 
bills,  and  was  under  the  misapprehension  that  your 
documents  were  promissory  notes. 

"It  was  my  wish  that  Mr.  Lovell  should  have  com- 
municated with  you  before  they  became  due,  but  I 
never  could  succeed  in  seeing  him.  I  called  on  him 
three  times  yesterday,  and  succeeded  in  seeing  him 
very  late.  He  promised,  if  possible,  to  communicate 
with  you  that  evening.  As  I  am  now  going  out  of 
town,  I  shall  not  be  able  to  see  him  again,  but  I  can 

291 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

not  doubt  that,  after  what  occurred  yesterday,  he  has 
by  this  time  written  to  you,  and  I  trust  satisfactorily. 

"Yours  sincerely, 

"D." 

Disraeli,  framer  of  bills  in  Parliament  these  five 
years,  was  still,  as  this  letter  shows,  bothered  with 
bills  of  another  order.  On  his  way  to  the  Treasury 
he  was  personally  impecunious;  and  before  he  con- 
trolled the  finances  of  the  nation,  had  a  rather  severe 
apprenticeship  in  the  management  of  his  own.  Al- 
ready at  this  date  he  had  been  for  two  and  a  half 
years  the  husband  of  Mrs,  Wyndham  Lewis,  whose 
wealth  has  often  been  exaggerated  to  give  color  to 
the  romantic  story  of  her  having  discharged  all  his 
debts  (mostly  incurred  at  election  times)  upon  the 
occasion  of  their  marriage.  The  scene  at  which  the 
list  of  his  liabilities  was  presented  to  her  has  been 
pictured:  even  the  talk  has  been  liberally  supplied: 
"She  always  knew  that  Benjamin's  mess  w^as  a  large 
one." 

The  widow  of  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis  did  indeed  suc- 
ceed to  the  life  interest  in  an  income  of  £4,000  a  year 
and  the  house  at  Grosvenor  Gate,  though  with  no 
such  "curious  bequest"  of  coals  and  candles  as  has 
been  generally  reported;  but  that  income  could  not 
allow  any  great  margin  for  the  payment  of  these  old 
accumulations  of  debt.  "Mrs.  Disraeli's  mother,"  Mrs. 
Yate,  so  named  by  her  marriage,  after  the  death  of 
Lieutenant  Evans,  with  Dr.  Y^ate,  was  herself  a  wom- 
an of  fortune;  and  Mrs.  Disraeli,  under  whose  care 
she  had  for  some  time  been  living,  and  who  was  away 

292 


Pltiiti>(/rit/iJi  1/1/  tlic  Linuhin  Stcrroncopi'c  Compani/. 
HEX.IAMIX     DISRAELI. 
From   a  photograph   (akt-n   in  tlie   'sixties. 


UNPARLIAMENTARY   BILLS 

from  Grosvenor  Gate  with  her  when  Disraeli  wrote 
this  letter,  was  her  mother's  sole  heir.  We  must, 
however,  have  done  with  the  common  story  that  Mrs. 
Disraeli  as  heir  at  law  of  her  uncle.  Sir  James  Viney, 
became  possessed  of  Taynton  Manor.  Sir  James  had 
mortgaged  the  property  to  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis;  and, 
a  few  months  later  than  the  date  of  which  we  are 
writing,  Mrs.  Disraeli,  as  one  of  her  first  husband's 
executors,  foreclosed;  the  Manor  was  sold,  and  the 
proceeds  were  held  under  the  trusts  created  by  the 
Wyndham  Lewis  will.  The  money  was  Mrs.  Disraeli's 
only  for  life.  "In  connection  with  this  sale,"  says  Mr. 
J.  Henry  Harris,  "a  tradition  survives  in  Gloucester 
that  Mr.  Disraeli  attended  the  Auction  Mart  in  the 
City  of  London,  and  that  the  purchaser  (Mr.  Laslett, 
M.P.)  paid  the  money  subsequently  in  cash  to  a  Mr. 
Lovegrove  (sometime  Mrs.  Disraeli's  agent),  who  was 
requested  by  Mr.  Disraeli  to  take  charge  of  it  for  the 
night."  ^  This  circumstantial  narrative  is  a  myth. 
Mr.  Disraeli  w^as  not  present  either  at  the  sale  or 
completion  of  the  purchase,  and  there  exists  a  note  in 
Mr.  Laslett's  handwriting,  indorsed  by  Mr.  Love- 
grove,  showing  how  and  to  whom  the  purchase-money 
was  paid;  the  gold  and  silver  coins  amounted  to  only 
£9  11.9.  Sd.;  there  was  £600  in  notes,  and  the  balance 
consisted  of  various  checks. 

'  Mr.  .Tames  Sykes,  for  instance,  quotes  (in  1902)  Mr.  Henry  ,J.  Taylor  of 
Gloucester  as  his  authority  for  the  statement  that  "she  gave  the  estate  to  Mr. 
Disraeli,  and  that  he  sold  it  by  auction";  also  that  "she  had  two  houses  in 
College  Green  which  now  belong  to  Lord  Beaconsfield's  executors."  Local 
tradition,  gravely  quoted  by  historians,  perpetually  lowers — or  elevates — 
legend  to  biograpliy. 

293 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

To  Sir  Robert  Peel 

"GrROSVENOR   GatE, 

'^Septe?nber  5th,  1841. 

"Dear  Sir  Robert:  I  have  shrunk  from  obtrud- 
ing myself  upon  you  at  this  moment,  and  should  have 
The  Peel-  Continued  to  do  so  if  there  were  any 
Disraeli  one  on  whom  I  could  rely  to  express  my 

Antagonism,      feelings. 

"I  am  not  going  to  trouble  you  with  claims  similar 
to  those  with  which  you  must  be  wearied.  I  will  not 
say  that  I-have  fought  since  1834 four  contests  for  your 
party,  that  I  have  expended  great  sums,  have  exerted 
my  intelligence  to  the  utmost  for  the  propagation  of 
your  polic}^,  and  have  that  position  in  life  which  can 
command  a  costly  seat. 

"But  there  is  one  peculiarity  in  my  case  on  which 
I  can  not  be  silent.  I  have  had  to  struggle  against  a 
storm  of  political  hate  and  malice,  which  few  men 
ever  experienced,  from  the  moment,  at  the  instigation 
of  a  member  of  your  Cabinet,  I  enrolled  myself  under 
your  banner,  and  I  have  only  been  sustained  under 
these  trials  by  the  conviction  that  the  day  would  come 
when  the  foremost  man  of  this  country  would  pub- 
licly testify  that  he  had  some  respect  for  my  ability 
and  my  character. 

"I  confess,  to  be  unrecognized  at  this  moment  by 
you  appears  to  me  to  be  overwhelming,  and  I  appeal 
to  your  own  heart — to  that  justice  and  that  magna- 
nimity which  I  feel  are  your  characteristics — to  save 
me  from  an  intolerable  humiliation. 

"Believe  me,  dear  Sir  Robert,  your  faithful  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

This  salient  letter  fitly  heads  a  section  dealing 
with  the  relations  between  Disraeli  and  Peel.     For 

294 


TIIK    PEEL-DISRAELI    ANTAGONISM 

this  letter,  aud  the  reply  made  to  it,  are  frequently 
eited  as  bearing  on  their  front  the  whole  of  the  offend- 
ing of  Sir  Kobert  in  the  eyes  of  the  younger  man. 
Because  Peel  did  not  "recognize"  Disraeli,  Disraeli 
did  not  go  round  with  Peel  on  the  Corn  Laws,  but 
fostered  a  Protectionist  party,  put  up  Lord  George 
as  a  dummy  leader,  and,  by  some  process  of  necro- 
mancy, arose  on  the  ashes  of  Peel  as  the  Phenix  of 
the  Tory  party.  It  is  the  Cabinet  Trick  of  politics;  it 
takes  no  count  of  national  movements;  the  country 
lies  a  purblind  puppet  in  the  magician's  hands. 

Disraeli's  application  did  not  come  alone.  Prob- 
ably it  was  the  very  same  post  that  took  to  Whitehall 
the  follow^ing  letter  from  the  lady,  who,  three  years 
before,  had  heard  from  her  husband  that  Peel  had 
heartily  congratulated  him  on  his  marriage. 

Mrs.  Disraeli  to  Sir  Robert  Peel. 

{Confidential.)  "Grosveivor  Gate, 

"Saturday  Night. 

"Dear  Sir  Robert  Peel:  I  beg  you  not  to  be 
angry  with  me  for  my  intrusion,  but  I  am  over- 
wlielmed  with  anxiety.  My  husband's  political  career 
is  forever  crushed,  if  you  do  not  appreciate  him. 

"Mr.  Disraeli's  exertions  are  not  unknown  to  you, 
but  there  is  much  he  has  done  that  you  can  not  be 
aware  of,  though  they  have  had  no  otiier  aim  but  to 
do  you  honor,  no  wish  for  recompense  but  your  ap- 
probation. 

"He  has  gone  further  than  most  to  make  your  op- 
ponents his  personal  enemies.  Tie  has  stood  four 
most  expensive  elections  since  1834,  and  gained  seats 

295 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

from  Whigs  in  two,  and  I  pledge  myself  as  far  as  one 
seat,  that  it  shall  always  be  at  your  command. 

"Literature  he  has  abandoned  for  politics.  Do  not 
destroy  all  his  hopes,  and  make  him  feel  his  life  has 
been  a  mistake. 

"May  I  venture  to  name  my  own  humble  but  en- 
thusiastic exertion  in  times  gone  by,  for  the  party,  or 
rather  for  your  own  splendid  self?  They  will  tell  you 
at  Maidstone,  that  more  than  £40,000  was  spent 
through  my  influence  only. 

"Be  pleased  not  to  answer  this,  as  I  do  not  wish 
any  human  being  to  know  I  have  written  to  you  this 
humble  petition. 

"I  am  now,  as  ever,  dear  Sir  Robert,  your  most 
faithful  servant, 

"Mary  Anne  Disraeli." 

Mr.  Charles  Stuart  Parker,  most  judicious  of  ed- 
itors, sandwiches  between  the  two  letters  the  two 
lines:  "[Disraeli's]  appeal  was  seconded,  probably 
without  his  knowledge,  by  the  devoted  partner  of  his 
aspirations."  If  the  phrase  "devoted  partner  of  his 
aspirations"  has  a  suggestion  of  burlesque  in  it,  that 
suggestion  does  not  show  Mr.  Parker  at  his  happiest; 
nor  does  the  "probably"  discover  him  in  one  of  the 
confident  moments  to  which  he  is  not  elsewhere  a 
stranger. 

Mrs.  Disraeli's  word  that  she  wrote  at  her  own 
volition  is  not  difficult  of  acceptance.  Had  Disraeli 
known  of  his  wife's  letter,  he  need  not,  and  surely 
would  not,  have  written  his  own.  Such  abstention 
would  pass  for  a  Machiavellian  masterstroke;  and  in 
not  sheltering  himself  behind  this  petticoat,  he  must 

296 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

be  held  to  be  deficieut  iu  cimning  by  those  who  make 
cunniug  his  characteristic.  The  situation  has  its 
counterparts  in  most  domestic  histories.  This  was  a 
woman  of  impulse,  and  her  husband's  interests  were 
acutely  hers  to  the  end  of  a  long  married  life,  which 
had  now  run  but  for  two  years.  "With  his  usual  pru- 
dence Sir  Robert  Peel  first  disclaimed  any  responsi- 
bility for  the  instigation  of  Mr.  Disraeli  [in  1834],  by 
a  member  of  the  Cabinet  unnamed,  to  join  the  party.-' 
Sir  Kobert's  "usual  prudence''!  If  that  were  an  exhi- 
bition of  it,  one  wonders  how  he  ever  carried  on  the 
Queen's  Government.  If  that  passage  of  Disraeli's 
letter  had  borne  such  an  interpretation  as  Sir  Robert 
gave  it,  delicacy  would  have  passed  it  lightly  over 
between  men  of  affairs,  often  meeting  in  public  and 
private;  but  the  forcing  of  that  sentiment  into  words 
which  scarcely  bear  it  seems  to  indicate  that  Sir 
Robert's  natural  suspiciousness  betrayed  him  into 
putting  upon  Disraeli  a  superfluous  indignity. 

Sir  Rohert  Peel  to  Disraeli. 

"Whitehall, 

"September  7 tJi,  1841. 

"My  dear  Sir:  I  must  in  the  first  place  observe 
that  no  member  of  the  Cabinet  which  I  have  formed 
ever  received  from  me  the  slightest  authority  to  make 
to  you  the  communication  to  which  you  refer. 

"Had  I  been  consulted  by  that  person,  I  should 
have  at  once  declined  to  authorize  a  communication 
whi<'li  would  have  been  altogether  at  variance  with 
the  princi])le  on  which  I  have  uniformly  acted  in  re- 
spect to  political  engagements,  and  by  adhering  to 
which  I  have  left  myself  at  entire  liberty  to  reconcile 

297 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

— as  far  as  my  limited  means  allow — justice  to  indi- 
vidual claims  with  the  efficient  conduct  of  the  public 
service. 

"I  know  not  who  is  the  member  of  the  Cabinet  to 
whom  you  allude,  and  can  not  but  think  he  acted  very 
imprudently^  But  quite  independently  of  this  con- 
sideration, I  should  have  been  very  happy  had  it  been 
in  my  power  to  avail  myself  of  your  offer  of  service; 
and  your  letter  is  one  of  the  many  I  receive  which  too 
forcibly  impress  upon  me  how  painful  and  invidious  is 
the  duty  which  I  have  been  compelled  to  undertake. 
I  am  only  supported  in  it  by  the  consciousness  that 
my  desire  has  been  to  do  justice. 

"I  trust  also  that  when  candidates  for  Parlia- 
mentary office  calmly  reflect  on  my  position,  and  the 
appointments  I  have  made — when  they  review  the 
names  of  those  previously  connected  with  me  in  pub- 
lic life,  whom  I  have  been  absolutelj^  compelled  to 
exclude,  the  claims  founded  on  acceptance  in  1834 
with  the  almost  hopeless  prospects  of  that  day,  the 
claims,  too,  founded  on  new  party  combinations — I 
trust  they  will  then  understand  how  perfectly  insuffi- 
cient are  the  means  at  my  disposal  to  meet  the  wishes 
that  are  conveyed  to  me  by  men  whose  co-operation  I 
should  be  proud  to  have,  and  whose  qualifications  and 
pretensions  for  office  I  do  not  contest." 

Disraeli  to  Sir  Robert  Peel. 

"Grosvenor  Gate, 

"Sejytember  8th,  1841. 

"Dear  Sir  Robert:  Justice  requires  that  I  should 
state  that  you  have  entirely  misconceived  my  mean- 
inp^,  in  supposing-  that  I  intended  even  to  intimate  that 
a  promise  of  official  promotion  had  ever  been  made 
to  me,  at  any  time,  by  any  member  of  your  Cabinet. 

"I  have  ever  been  aware  that  it  w^as  not  in  the 

298 


THP:    PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

power  of  any  member  of  your  Cabinet  to  fulfil  such 
engagements,  bad  he  made  them:  permit  me  to  add 
that  it  is  utterly  alien  to  my  nature  to  bargain  and 
stipulate  on  such  subjects.  Parliamentary  office 
should  be  the  recognition  of  party  service  and  Parlia- 
mentary ability,  and  as  such  only  was  it  to  me  an 
object  of  ambition. 

"It  appears  to  me  that  you  have  mistaken  an  al- 
lusion to  my  confidence  in  your  sympathy,  for  a 
reference  to  a  pledge  received  from  a  third  person. 
If  such  a  pledge  had  been  given  me  by  yourself,  and 
not  redeemed,  I  should  have  taken  refuge  in  silence. 
Not  to  be  appreciated  may  be  a  mortification:  to  be 
balked  of  a  promised  reward  is  only  a  vulgar  acci- 
dent of  life,  to  be  borne  without  a  murmur. 

"Your  faithful  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 


Nobody  will  deny  the  dignity  of  Disraeli's  second 
letter.  Was  the  first  undignified?  In  itself,  an  ap- 
plication for  service  under  Government  can  not  be 
earmarked  from  other  applications  for  service,  ad- 
dressed to  corporations  or  to  newspapers  or  to 
employers  of  any  kind.  Disraeli  applied  the  general 
judgment  on  a  transaction  of  the  sort;  he  did  what 
others  had  done  before  him.  If  the  inherent  judgment 
did  not  err,  was  taste  lacking?  Taste  must  be  tested 
by  custom ;  and  the  reader  of  the  whole  very  interest- 
ing and  creditable  Peel  correspondence  will  not  be 
left  in  doubt  as  to  the  very  common  habit  of  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men  in  making  known  their  wants, 
were  these  viceroyalties  or  baronetcies.  Indeed,  if 
the  kind  of  patriotic  pride  with  which  people  talk  of 

299 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

having  "served  their  country"  be  not  a  fiction,  the  ap- 
plication is  in  itself  an  act  of  a  patriot.  Methods  may 
differ.  A  Minister  may  be  so  closely  in  touch  with  a 
man  that  a  look  or  a  syllable  suffices:  a  letter  would 
be  a  superfluity.  In  other  cases  a  third  party  may^ay 
the  Tvord  or  write  the  note.  There  are  situations  in 
which  a  wink  or  a  pressure  of  the  hand  may  suffice. 
Some  of  these,  perhaps  because  they  have  no  need  to 
stand  cap  in  hand,  shake  the  head  at  those  less  luckily 
placed.  One  such,  the  son  and  the  nephew  of  two  of 
Peel's  Cabinet  colleagues,  and  himself  a  Cabinet  Min- 
ister in  successive  Liberal  administrations,  speaking 
of  this  application  of  Disraeli's,  said  to  me  in  a  paren- 
thesis, "Which  I  suppose  nobody  who  respected  him- 
self would  make."  Well,  the  Marquis  of  Eipon,  who 
does  respect  himself  and  whom  everybody  respects, 
had  as  little  need  to  ask  as  had  his  father  or  his 
uncle.  Lord  Goderich  or  Lord  de  Grey.^  But  had  they 
been,  instead  of  great  personages,  men  who,  without 
being  greedy,  had  yet  to  live  by  what  they  earned, 
they  might  well  have  run  after  the  Minister  instead 
of  leaving  the  Minister  to  run  after  them.    Bad  form 

'  Extract  from  a  letter  addressed  by  Lord  Stanley  to  Sir  Eobert  Peel  when 
a  Conservative  Government  was  in  formation  in  1839:  "Ripon  has  this  mo- 
ment been  with  me,  anxious  to  know  what  was  going  on.  I  said  I  knew  it  was 
your  intention  to  offer  him  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet,  but  of  offices  I  knew  noth- 
ing. He  said  he  was  quite  satisfied,  that  he  should  not  have  liked  to  be 
passed  over,  but  that  you  would  not  find  him  exigent.  I  thought  it  best  to 
tell  you  this  at  once."  On  the  same  occasion  communications  passed  be- 
tween Sir  Robert  and  Lady  de  Grey,  who  wrote  to  him,  with  a  feminine 
camaraderie  that  would  have  delighted  Disraeli,  immediately  on  the  defeat 
of  the  Whigs  over  the  Jamaica  Bill :  "My  dear  Peel, — Tlie  vote  of  last  night 
may  probably  call  you  into  power.  Pray  forgive  your  most  truly  attached 
friend  if  she  gives  you  a  word  of  advice.     The  Queen  has  always  expressed 

300 


THE    PEEL-DISRAELI    ANTAGONISM 

in  these  matters  is  surely  often  tlie  form  of  tliose 
whom  we  dislike — of  the  alien. 

We  may  leave  this  first  scene  in  this  Peel  drama, 
which  already  begins  to  turn  into  tragedy,  by  saying 
that  if  Disraeli  chose  his  methods  badly,  Peel,  for  his 
part,  did  not  know  his  man;  and  there  we  have  the 
advantage  over  Peel — we  have  seen  proof  of  Disraeli's 
l>owers;  and  if  we  call  the  Minister  stupid,  we  do  so 
with  the  wisdom  of  those  who  are  wise  after  the  event. 
Discernment  was  not  the  forte  of  "the  great  medioc- 
rity": his  was  a  nature  that  owed  everything  to 
tuition;  to  intuition  nothing  at  all.  He  liked  the  ordi- 
nary, and  Disraeli  was  never  that;  not  in  his  mind,  not 
in  his  manner,  not  in  his  name,  not  even  in  his  dress. 
Dress  is  still  a  vast  item  in  the  Englishman's  table  of 
appreciation;  dress  or  the  want  of  it.  Bolingbroke,  the 
model  of  Disraeli  in  so  many  intellectual  attainments 
and  political  methods,  is  still  known  to  a  large  public 
mostly  as  the  man  who  ran  naked  in  the  Park. 

But  the  relations  between  Peel  and  Disraeli  before 
this  exchange  of  letters  are  worth  a  note.  It  has  been 
charged  against  the  Minister,  on  one  hand,  that  he 
had  nothing  but  haughty  disdain  for  Disraeli,  man, 
writer,  and  publicist;  against  Disraeli,  on  the  other, 
that  in  writing  to  Peel  he  was  guilty  of  an  intrusion 

herself  much  impressed  with  Lord  Melbourne's  open  manner  and  his  truth. 
The  latter  quality  you  possess,  the  former  not.  Now,  dear  Peel,  the  first 
impression  on  so  young  a  girl's  mind  is  of  immense  consequence.  I  wish  you 
success  from  my  friendship  for  you,  from  my  high  esteem  and  admiration  of 
your  noble  character,  and  from  the  belief  that  you  alone  can  avert  the  evils 
whicli  threaten  the  country.  Your  very  affectionate  H.  de  Grey."  The 
lady  had  from  her  "dear  Peel"  a  reply  in  which  he  offered  high  office  to  her 
husband. 

301 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

that  merged  into  insolence.  Botli  charges  are  unjust; 
and  he  who  refutes  the  one  has  the  gratification  of 
automatically  refuting  the  other,  at  least  partially; 
righting  both  Disraeli  and  Peel  with  one  stroke  of  the 
pen.  The  simple  truth  is  that  Peel,  within  his  limita- 
tions, formed  a  fair  estimate  of  Disraeli's  abilities  and 
gave  him  a  welcome  rather  unusually  cordial  for  a 
man  who,  if  manners  made  that  man,  could  not  but 
be  accounted  cold  to  the  point  of  zero.      ^ 

In  1836,  five  years  before  the  Correspondence,  Dis- 
raeli sent  a  copy  of  his  Vindication  of  the  English  Con- 
stitution to  Peel,  by  whom  he  had  been  greeted  "most 
flatteringly''  six  months  earlier  at  a  dinner  given  by 
Lord  Chandos  to  a  party  of  men,  all  senators  except 
Disraeli.  "Late  and  grudgingly,"  he  says,  he  sent  the 
book  "with  a  cold  dry  note,  convinced  that  he  would 
never  notice  or  even  confess  to  having  heard  of  it, 
being,  as  you  well  know,  by  reputation  the  most  jeal- 
ous, rigid,  and  haughty  of  men."  That  letter  does  not 
appear  in  the  Peel  Correspondence:  probably  it  was 
not  kept;  for  the  man  who  addressed  the  Minister  was 
not  yet  even  a  member  of  Parliament.  If  the  letter 
was  cold,  the  book  was  all  aglow;  and  Sir  Robert 
could  not  look  down  its  taking  contents-table  without 
reading  "Vindication  of  the  Recent  Policy  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  and  his  Cabinet."  In  a  couple  of  pages 
the  young  writer  defends  the  Tory  Government  for 
passing  Democratic  measures  they  had  formerly  op- 
posed. 

The  point  is  one  of  cogent  bearing  upon  the  polit- 
ical position  of  Disraeli.     From  1831  to  1834  he  had 

302 


THE   rEET.-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

been  politically  unlabeled.  He  had  been  anti-Whig 
without  being  pro-Tory.  He  recognized  and  defended 
in  the  opportunism  of  Sir  Robert  an  approach  to  his 
own  early  attitude  of  inveterate  dislike  for  the  Whigs, 
"with,"  as  he  here  says  again,  "their  mouths  full  of 
the  People,  Reform,  and  Liberty,  and  their  portfolios 
bursting  with  oligarchical  coups  d'etat.  If,"  he  con- 
tinues, "I  appeal  to  the  measures  brought  forward  by 
Sir  Robert  Peel  as  evidence  that  the  Tories  are  not 
opposed  to  measures  of  political  amelioration,  I  shall 
perhaps  be  met  with  that  famous  dilemma  of  insin- 
cerity or  apostasy  which  was  urged  during  the  last 
general  election  on  the  Whig  hustings  with  an  air  of 
irrefutable  triumph,  which,  had  it  been  better  ground- 
ed, had  been  less  amusing.  .  .  .  This  great  deed, 
therefore,  instead  of  being  an  act  of  insincerity  or 
apostasy,  was  conceived  in  good  faith  and  in  perfect 
harmony  with  the  previous  policy  of  the  party;  it  was 
at  the  same  time  indispensable,  and  urged  alike  by 
the  national  voice  and  the  national  interests,  and  his- 
tory will  record  it  as  the  conduct  of  patriotic  wisdom. 
.  .  .  The  clause  of  Lord  Chandos,  your  lordship's 
(Lord  Lyndhurst's)  triumphant  defense  of  the  freemen 
of  England,  and  the  last  registration,  are  three  great 
Democratic  movements  and  quite  in  keeping  with  the 
original  and  genuine  character  of  Toryism."  The 
passage  illustrates  Disraeli's  future  as  well  as  his 
past;  his  claim  for  Peel  covers  the  policy  of  his  own 
Household  Suffrage  Act  of  later  years. 

Be  it  borne  in  mind  that  to  Lord  Lyndhurst  was 
addressed  the  letter  in  which  Disraeli  defended  at 

303 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

once  the  English  Constitution  and  the  constitutional 
minister.  Disraeli  had  first  met  Peel's  Lord  Chancel- 
lor a  year  earlier.  At  once  the  two  men  liked  each 
other;  and  it  was  Lyndhurst  who  in  1834  went  to  Grev- 
ille,  and  otherwise  busied  himself,  to  get  a  seat  into 
which  Disraeli  could  settle,  at  last  a  wearer  of  the 
badge.  If  the  liking  between  the  two  men  was  mutual, 
so  was  the  influence:  from  Lyndhurst  Disraeli  re- 
ceived Peel's  shilling,  but  Lyndhurst  was  able  to  hear 
and  to  report  upon  the  policy  for  which  this  recruit 
was  ready  to  fight.  In  the  result  a  newspaper  notice 
of  the  time  speaks  of  both  Lyndhurst  and  Peel  as 
having  "adopted  Mr.  Disraeli's  view  of  the  Constitu- 
tion." Under  these  conditions  did  Sir  Kobert  receive 
the  printed  "Letter  to  Lyndhurst"  and  the  too  sensi- 
tively distant  manuscript  letter  of  Disraeli's;  and  on 
this  occasion,  at  any  rate,  the  response  he  made  ex- 
ceeded the  expectations  of  his  correspondent.  This  is 
what  he  wrote: 

"I  beg  to  return  you  my  best  thanks  for  that  copy 
of  your  work  .  .  .  for  which  I  am  indebted  for 
your  kind  attention  and  consideration.  It  is  not  the 
only  one  in  my  possession,  for,  attracted  as  well  by 
your  name  as  by  some  extracts  in  the  public  papers, 
which  struck  me  as  very  forcibly  written,  I  had  taken 
the  first  opportunity  of  procuring  a  copy,  and  was 
gratified  and  surprised  to  find  that  a  familiar  and  ap- 
parently exhausted  topic  could  be  treated  with  so 
much  original  force  of  argument  and  novelty  of  illus- 
tration. I  thank  you  both  for  the  work  itself  and  the 
satisfaction  which  the  reading  of  it  has  afforded  me." 

Lyndhurst  gave  Disraeli  the  extra  delight  of  say- 

304 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

iiig  that  this  expression  was  '■^mach,  considering  the 
writer." 

In  the  July  of  1837  Disraeli  was  returned  to  the 
House  of  Commons  as  Tory  member  for  Maidstone, 
and  in  November  took  his  seat  on  the  second  bench 
behind  Teel,  encouraged,  no  doubt,  to  that  propinquity 
by  Peel's  welcome  to  him  the  day  before,  at  the 
Carlton. 

"He  welcomed  me  very  warmly,"  Disraeli  wrote, 
"and  all  noticed  his  cordial  demeanor.  He  asked  me 
to  join  a  small  dinner  at  the  Carlton  on  Thursday — 
'a  House  of  Commons  dinner  purely,'  he  said;  'by  that 
time  we  shall  know  something  of  the  temper  of  the 
House.' " 

There  must  have  been  something  very  exciting  in 
that  "we"  to  the  neophyte.  His  admiration  for  Peel's 
speech  on  the  Address  finds  expression,  not  in  any  set 
form,  but  in  a  private  letter — "one  of  the  finest 
speeches  I  ever  heard,  most  powerful  and  even  bril- 
liant." A  fortnight  later  we  have  Peel's  opinion  on 
Disraeli's  first  speech,  which  he  had  turned  round  to 
cheer  during  its  delivery:  "I  say  anything  but  failure: 
he  must  make  his  way."  A  few  days  later  he  dined 
with  Peel  at  Peel's  first  sessional  party.  Again,  a  few 
days  later,  when  he  made  his  second  speech,  "Peel 
cheered  loudly-"  at  one  point,  and  indeed,  says  Dis- 
raeli, "throughout  my  remarks  he  backed  me" — meta- 
phorically and  literally  too. 

Fifteen  months  later  there  was  another  dinner  at 
Peel's,  where  Disraeli  was  more  than  welcome. 

"I  came  late,  having  mistaken  the  hour,"  he  writes 
21  305 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

to  Bradenham,  where  all  his  triumphs  had  a  second 
life.  "I  found  some  twenty-five  gentlemen  grubbing 
in  solemn  silence.  I  threw  a  shot  over  the  table  and 
set  them  going,  and  in  time  they  became  even  noisy. 
Peel,  I  think,  was  quite  pleased  that  I  broke  the  awful 
stillness,  as  he  talked  to  me  a  good  deal,  though  we 
were  far  removed." 

Even  that  fourth  decade  of  the  century,  which  was 
to  witness  the  breach,  began  in  amity.  In  July,  1840, 
"Peel  most  gallantly  came  to  the  rescue  of  his  'honor- 
able friend  the  member  for  Maidstone,'  and  gave  me 
immense  kudos.^^ 

The  letter  writen  to  Sir  Kobert  a  year  later  invited 
him,  in  effect,  to  bear  official  testimony  to  the  ability 
and  the  character  that  he  had  seemed,  in  private  and  in 
Parliament,  to  appreciate.  The  wording  of  the  reply 
which  "Dear  Sir  Robert"  sent  to  "My  dear  Sir"  was 
an  undoubted  rebuff;  the  Minister  assumed  the  de- 
fensive in  a  manner  most  provocative.  Disraeli,  to  his 
astonishment,  found  himself  treated  as  a  schemer 
by  the  man  who  had  "backed"  him,  and  dined  him,  and 
called  him  his  "friend."  A  regretful  refusal  of  office 
on  the  ground  that  other  claims  were  paramount 
would  have  carried  disappointment,  no  doubt;  but 
this  was  to  inflict  most  superfluous  pain.  Something, 
unknown  to  Disraeli,  must  have  changed  Peel's  atti- 
tude toward  him,  and  this  at  the  last  moment;  for, 
on  the  very  eve  of  the  Dissolution,  in  the  June  of  1841, 
Disraeli  sent  to  Sir  Robert  a  memorandum  dealing 
with  Lord  John  Russell's  reflections  on  his  Parlia- 
mentary defeat. 

306 


Pitotoijriipll    1)1/    W.    .\-     I),     hniriull.     Lnlldilll. 

I.OUD     I'.I.ACONSFIEI.D. 
From  a  pliulugraph  takoii  in  tlie   Vc\"enlies. 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

Whence  came  that  change?  Possibly  there  is  a 
hint  of  it  in  the  formation  of  the  Young  Enghind  party 
in  1841.  It  was  of  the  nature  of  a  fad  in  the  eyes  of 
the  elders.  Thomas  Love  Peacock  satirized  it  in 
Crotchet  Castle.  Disraeli,  in  Sybil,  applies  by  the 
mouth  of  the  conventional  Tory  the  term  "crotchety" 
to  Egremont's  (his  own)  speech  in  defense  of  the 
Chartists;  and  elsewhere  we  have  the  dictum:  "Well, 
that  will  not  do  for  Peel.  He  does  not  like  crotchety 
men."  The  clue  seems  worth  a  mention,  but  it  does 
not  carry  us  far,  and  we  feel  that  the  mystery  of  the 
subsequent  Disraeli  Denial  is  not  the  only  mystery  to 
pass  unsolved  into  history  with  the  Peel-Disraeli  cor- 
respondence of  1841. 

Many  things  must  have  added  fuel  to  the  fires  of 
Disraeli's  just  resentment  against  the  tone  of  Sir 
Robert's  letter.  To  begin  with,  he  was  no  doubt 
pressed  for  money,  in  spite  of  a  prosperous  marriage 
and  of  "that  position  in  life"  to  which  allusion  had 
been  made.  An  autograph  letter  put  at  my  disposal, 
and  dated  six  months  later  than  the  letter  to  Peel, 
betrays  a  pecuniary  pressure  which  his  wife's  income 
(not  yet  increased  by  her  inheritance  from  her  mother) 
had  been  unable  in  two  years  to  remove.  If  is  printed 
on  another  page,  but  these  allusions  to  money  expend- 
ed on  elections  should  be  read  in  the  light  of  it;  Dis- 
raeli, in  his  embarrassment,  thought  his  expenditure 
on  the  party  was  one  which,  under  the  circumstances, 
the  party  might  feel  inclined  to  recoup.  There  was 
talk,  private  and  public,  about  the  expectation  of 
office.    "When  the  Ministry  of  1841  was  forming,  both 

307 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Disraeli  and  his  wife  gave  out  that  they  were  to  have 
the  Secretaryship  of  the  Admiralty,"  is  the  nasty  (and, 
with  Peel's  letter  before  us,  we  may  say  the  untruth- 
ful) version  of  the  Grosvenor  Gate  expectations  given 
in  one  of  "the  delectable"  Abraham  Hayward's  let- 
ters. In  Parliament,  too.  Lord  Palmerston  had  his 
jaunty  jibe.  Disraeli  made  a  proposal  to  unite  the 
consular  and  diplomatic  services  (he  had  fared  well 
at  the  hands  of  consuls  during  his  early  travels,  and 
with  his  usual  sense  of  public  logic  sought,  when  the 
chance  came,  to  give  legislative  effect  to  the  high 
opinion  he  had  formed  of  them),  and  in  the  course  of 
debate  Lord  Palmerston,  opposing,  said:  "The  honor- 
able gentleman  had  affirmed  the  general  principle 
that  political  adherents  ought  to  be  rewarded  by  ap- 
pointments, and  he  regretted  to  observe  an  exception 
to  that  rule  in  the  person  of  the  honorable  member 
himself."  Disraeli  felt  the  prick,  no  doubt;  he  gave 
in  return  a  rapier  thrust.  He  offered  his  acknowledg- 
ments for  the  noble  Viscount's  aspirations  for  an  op- 
ponent's political  promotion: 

"The  noble  Viscount  is  a  consummate  master  of 
the  subject;  and  if  he  will  only  impart  to  me  the  secret 
by  which  he  has  himself  contrived  to  retain  office  dur- 
ing seven  successive  Administrations,  the  present  de- 
bate will  certainly  not  be  without  a  result." 

Disraeli's  proposal  was,  Mr.  O'Connor  jubilantly 
says,  "treated  with  as  scant  courtesy  by  Peel  as  by 
Palmerston."  That  this  was  Disraeli's  own  impres- 
sion we  shall  shortly  see.  ]\Ir.  O'Connor  and  Disraeli 
are  for  once  united,  and  against  the  Minister.     The 

308 


THE   PEEL-DISRxVELI   ANTAGONISM 

apparently  siiddeu  prejudice  against  Disraeli  in  Sir 
Ivobert's  mind  had  evidently  come  to  stay.  Mr.  O'Con- 
nor testifies,  on  the  other  hand,  to  Disraeli's  unruffled 
loyalty  to  Peel.  ''He  continued  to  laud  Sir  Robert 
with  unabated  zeal,"  he  says  of  the  1842  session.  And 
again:  "During  the  greater  part  of  the  session  of  1843 
Mr.  Disraeli  continued  to  be  a  zealous  supporter  of 
Sir  Robert  Peel."  In  the  following  year  Coningshy  was 
published.  It  is  from  Sir  Robert  Peel's  own  copy  of 
that  work,  with  the  page  turned  down  at  the  place, 
that  I  transcribe  the  passage  in  which  Disraeli  re- 
cords the  accession  of  Wellington  and  Peel  to  high 
office  in  1819: 

"There  was  an  individual  w^ho  had  not  long  entered 
public  life,  but  who  had  already  filled  considerable, 
though  still  subordinate,  offices.  Having  acquired  a 
certain  experience  of  the  duties  of  administration  and 
distinction  for  his  mode  of  fulfilling  them,  he  had 
withdrawn  from  his  public  charge;  perhaps  because 
he  found  it  a  barrier  to  the  attainment  of  that  Parlia- 
mentary reputation  for  which  he  had  already  shown 
both  a  desire  and  a  capacity;  perhaps,  because  being 
young  and  independent,  he  was  not  over  anxious  irre- 
mediably to  identify  his  career  with  a  school  of  pol- 
itics of  the  infallibility  of  which  his  experience  might 
have  already  made  him  a  little  skeptical.  But  he  pos- 
sessed the  talents  that  were  absolutely  wanted,  and 
the  terms  were  at  his  own  dictation.  A  very  dis- 
tinguished mediocrity  was  thrust  out,  and  Mr.  Peel 
became  Secretary  of  State.  From  this  moment  dates 
that  intimate  connection  between  the  Duke  of  Well- 

309 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 

ington  and  the  present  First  Minister.  It  was  the 
sympathetic  result  of  superior  minds  placed  among 
inferior  intelligences.  From  this  moment,  too,  the 
domestic  government  of  the  country  assumed  a  new 
character,  and  one  universall}'  admitted  to  have  been 
distinguished  by  a  spirit  of  enlightened  progress  and 
comprehensive  amelioration." 

There  was  no  gall  mixed  with  the  ink  of  Disraeli 
in  this  sketch  of  the  character  and  consequences  of 
Peel's  admission  to  Cabinet  rank. 

Nothing  can  be  idler,  then,  than  a  common  asser- 
tion that  Disraeli,  "spurned"  by  Peel  in  1841,  at  once, 
and  with  no  shame,  went  into  opposition.  The  Re- 
peal of  the  Corn  Laws  was  a  great  event,  and  one 
which  can  not  be  left  out  of  the  reckoning.  It  was 
Peel  who  withdrew  from  the  Protectionist  members; 
not  they  from  Peel.  Nor  were  there  wanting  other 
signs  of  the  great  rent  imminent  in  the  temple  of  Tory- 
ism. Disraeli  saw  ahead;  and  his  foreseeing  brought 
upon  him  the  boycott  of  the  Minister  when  next  the 
Minister  issued  a  summons  to  his  followers. 

Disraeli  to  Peel. 

"Grosvenor  Gate, 
"Febrtmrp  Ath,  1844. 

"Dear  Sir  Robert:  I  was  quite  unaware  until 
Friday  night,  when  I  was  generally  apprised  of  it, 
that  the  circumstance  of  my  not  having  received  the 
usual  circular  from  yourself  to  attend  Parliament  was 
intentional. 

"The  procedure,  of  course,  admits  of  only  one  in- 
ference. 

310 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

'^\s  a  mere  fact,  the  circumstance  must  be  unim- 
portant both  to  you  and  to  myself.  For  you,  in  the 
present  state  of  parties,  wliich  will  probably  last  our 
generation,  a  solitary  vote  must  be  a  matter  of  in- 
difference; and  for  me,  our  relations,  never  much  cul- 
tivated, had  for  some  time  merged  in  the  mere  not 
displeasing  consciousness  of  a  political  connection 
with  an  individual  eminent  for  his  abilities,  his  vir- 
tues, and  his  station. 

"As  a  matter  of  feeling,  however,  I  think  it  right 
that  a  public  tie,  formed  in  the  hour  of  political  ad- 
versity, which  has  endured  many  years,  and  which  has 
been  sustained  on  my  side  by  some  exertions,  should 
not  terminate  without  this  clear  understanding  of  the 
circumstances  under  which  it  has  closed. 

"I  am  informed  that  I  am  to  seek  the  reason  of 
its  disruption  in  my  Parliamentary  conduct  during 
the  last  session.  On  looking  over  the  books,  I  per- 
ceive that  there  were  four  occasions  on  which  I  ven- 
tured to  take  a  principal  part  in  debate. 

"On  the  first  I  vindicated  your  commercial  policy, 
on  grounds  then  novel  in  discussion,  but  which  I  be- 
lieved conducive  to  your  interest  and  your  honor,  and 
the  justness  and  accuracy  of  which,  though  never 
noticed  by  yourself,  or  any  of  your  colleagues,  were 
on  a  subsequent  occasion  referred  to  and  formally 
acknowledged  by  the  leader  of  the  Opposition. 

"In  the  second  instance  I  spoke  on  a  treaty  of  a 
difficult  and  delicate  nature,  against  which  the  Oppo- 
sition urged  no  insignificant  charges,  and  to  assist 
you  to  defend  which  I  was  aware  you  would  not  be 
likely  to  find  efficacious  support  on  your  own  side.  I 
have  reason  to  believe  that  my  efforts  on  this  occasion 
were  not  wholly  uninflnential  on  opinion,  although 
certainly  T  never  learned  this  from  any  member  of  her 
Majesty's  Government. 

311 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"At  the  very  end  of  the  session  there  were  two 
other  occasions  on  which  I  spoke,  and  against  isolated 
points  of  the  existing  policy;  I  mean  with  respect  to 
Ireland  and  the  Turkish  Empire.  Although  an  indis- 
creet individual,  apparently  premonished,  did  in  the 
last  instance  conceive  a  charge  against  me  of  treating 
the  Government  with  'systematic  contumely,'  he  was 
utterly  unable  to  substantiate,  scarcely  equal  to  state, 
the  imputation,  and  the  full  miscarriage  was  gener- 
ally admitted.  I  can  recall  no  expression  in  those  re- 
marks more  critical  than  others  which  have  been 
made  on  other  subjects,  as  on  your  agricultural  policy, 
for  example,  by  several  of  the  supporters  of  your  gen- 
eral system.  These  remarks  may  indeed  have  been 
deficient  in  that  hearty  good-will  which  should  be  our 
spontaneous  sentiment  to  our  political  chief,  and 
which  I  have  generally  accorded  to  you  in  no  niggard 
spirit;  but  pardon  me  if  I  now  observe,  with  frankness 
but  with  great  respect,  that  you  might  have  found 
some  reason  for  this,  if  you  had  cared  to  do  so,  in  the 
want  of  courtesy  in  debate  which  I  had  the  frequent 
mortification  of  experiencing  from  you  since  your 
accession  to  power. 

"Under  these  circumstances,  stated  without  pas- 
sion, and  viewed,  I  am  sure,  without  acrimony,  I  am 
bound  to  say  that  I  look  upon  the  fact  of  not  having 
received  your  summons,  coupled  with  the  ostentatious 
manner  in  which  it  has  been  bruited  about,  as  a  pain- 
ful personal  procedure  which  the  past  by  no  means 
authorized." 

Peel  to  Disraeli. 

"Whitehall, 

*' February  Qth,  1844. 

"My  dear  Sir:  Although  the  omission  on  my  part 
to  request  your  attendance  at  the  meeting  of  Parlia- 

312 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

ment  was  not  an  accident  or  inadvertent  omission,  it 
certainly  was  not  the  resnlt  of  any  feeling  of  personal 
irritation  or  ill-will  on  account  of  observations  made 
by  you  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

"I  hope  I  have  not  a  good  memory  for  expressions 
used  in  debate  which  cause  surprise  or  pain  at  the 
moment,  and  it  would  be  quite  unsuitable  to  the  spirit 
in  which  your  letter  is  written,  and  in  which  it  is  re- 
ceived, were  I,  after  the  lapse  of  several  months,  to 
refresh  my  recollection  of  such  expressions,  if  such 
were  used. 

"My  reason  for  not  sending  you  the  usual  circular 
was  an  honest  doubt  whether  I  was  entitled  to  send 
it — whether  toward  the  close  of  the  last  session  of 
Parliament  you  had  not  expressed  opinions  as  to  the 
conduct  of  the  Government  in  respect  to  more  than 
one  important  branch  of  public  policy,  foreign  and 
domestic,  which  precluded  me,  in  justice  both  to  you 
and  to  myself,  from  preferring  personally  an  earnest 
request  for  your  attendance. 

''If  you  will  refer  to  the  debate  on  the  Irish  Arms 
Bill,  and  to  that  on  Servia,  and  recall  to  your  recollec- 
tion the  general  tenor  of  your  observations  on  the 
conduct  of  the  Government,  you  will,  I  think,  admit 
that  my  doubt  was  not  an  unreasonable  one. 

"It  gives  me,  however,  great  satisfaction  to  infer 
from  your  letter — as  I  trust  I  am  justified  in  infer- 
ring— that  my  impressions  were  mistaken,  and  my 
scruples  unnecessary. 

"I  will  not  conclude  without  noticing  two  or  three 
points  adverted  to  in  your  letter. 

"I  am  unconscious  of  having  on  any  occasion 
treated  you  with  the  want  of  that  respect  and  courtesy 
which  I  readily  admit  are  justly  your  due.  If  I  did 
so,  the  act  was  wholly  unintentional  on  my  part, 

"Any  comments  that  were  made  on  expressions 

313 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

used  by  you  toward  the  Government  were,  so  far  as  is 
consistent  witli  my  knowledge,  altogether  spontane- 
ous on  the  part  of  the  member  from  whom  they  pro- 
ceeded. They  were  at  any  rate  not  made  at  my  insti- 
gation or  suggestion,  direct  or  indirect. 

"Lastly,  I  can  not  call  to  mind  that  I  have  men- 
tioned to  a  single  person — excepting  to  the  one  or  two 
to  w^hom  the  mention  was  absolutely  unavoidable — 
that  I  had  omitted  to  address  to  you  a  request  for  your 
attendance.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  my  wishes 
or  feelings  than  that  there  should  be  any  ostentatious 
notice  of  the  omission." 

Once  more  had  Peel  tried  to  place  Disraeli  in  a 
difficulty;  he  was  to  be  ostracized  not  from  the  Gov- 
ernment only,  but  from  the  party  itself.  Things  did 
not  mend  when  Factory  legislation  followed.  For 
here  again  the  Young  England  party,  supporting 
Lord  Ashley's  resolution  to  restrict  the  hours  of  labor 
for  women  and  for  children  under  thirteen  years  of 
age  to  ten  a  day,  twice  defeated  the  Government  in 
the  Lobby.  Peel's  account  of  the  matter,  rendered  to 
the  Queen,  is  quite  candid:  "The  additional  restric- 
tion of  labor  was  opposed  by  your  Majesty's  servants 
on  the  ground  that  it  exposed  the  manufacturers  of 
this  country  to  a  very  formidable  competition  with 
those  of  other  countries,  in  which  labor  is  not  re- 
stricted; that  it  must  lead  at  a  very  early  period  to  a 
great  reduction  in  the  wages  of  the^workmen,"  etc. — 
Time,  on  the  side  of  Disraeli,  has  refuted  Peel's 
premises.  "A  great  body  of  the  agricultural  mem- 
bers," Peel  proceeds,  "partly  out  of  hostility  to  the 
Anti-Corn  Law  League,  partly  from  the  influence  of 

314 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

humane  feelings,  voted  against  the  Government." 
For  good  or  for  evil,  Peel,  though  he  led  the  Country 
party,  was  a  manufacturer's  man.  King  Ernest  of 
Hanover's  despairing  remark  may  here  have  some  ap- 
l)lication:   "The  jenny  will  out." 

A  Coercion  Bill  for  Ireland  had  equally  failed  to 
secure  Disraeli's  sympathy;  and  it  is  interesting  dur- 
ing the  passage  of  Mr.  Wyndham's  Land  Bill  to  recall 
that  Disraeli,  sixty  years  ago,  declared:  "If  the  noble 
Lord  (John  Russell)  will  come  forward  with  a  compre- 
hensive plan  to  settle  the  Irish  question,  I  will  sup- 
port it,  even  though  I  might  afterward  feel  it  neces- 
sary to  retire  from  Parliament  or  to  place  my  seat  at 
the  disposal  of  my  constituency."  All  this,  in  Peel's 
eyes,  was  crotchety  enough,  no  doubt. 

Convincing  proof  of  Peel's  prejudice  is  afforded  by 
letters  Sir  James  Graham  wrote  to  him  and  he  to  Sir 
James  Graham.  Disraeli  asked  Sir  James  to  appoint 
his  brother  to  a  Parliamentary  clerkship.  Such  re- 
quests are  the  commonplaces  of  politics.  Yet  Sir 
James  writes  to  Peel: 

"I  was  astonished  at  receiving  a  letter  from  Dis- 
raeli asking  for  a  place  for  his  brother.  His  letter  is 
an  impudent  one,  doubly  so  when  I  remember  his  con- 
duct and  language  in  the  House  of  Commons  toward 
the  end  of  the  last  session.  I  thought  it  better  to 
answer  him  by  return  of  post.  To  have  bantered  him 
on  party  ties  would  have  been  degrading.  To  have 
held  out  vague  hopes  would  have  been  represented  to 
him  as  unfair.  I  determined  therefore  to  give  him  a 
civil  but  flat  refusal." 

315 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Because  Disraeli  had  not  seen  everything  with  the 
eye  of  ministers,  one  of  them  thinks  him  "impudent" 
in  his  brother's  behalf,  and  another — Peel  himself — 
dances  to  this  strange  tune. 

"I  am  very  glad,"  he  replies  to  Graham,  who  was 
by  way  of  being  a  friend  to  Disraeli,  "that  Mr.  Disraeli 
has  asked  for  an  office  for  his  brother.  It  is  a  good 
thing  when  such  a  man  puts  his  shabbiness  on  record. 
He  asked  me  for  office  himself,  and  I  was  not  sur- 
prised that  being  refused  he  became  independent  and 
a  patriot.  But  to  ask  favors  after  his  conduct  last 
session  is  too  bad.  However,  it  is  a  bridle  in  his 
mouth." 

Tlie  Minister  who  wrote  of  this  shabbiness  had 
written  complacently  enough  that  half  the  Country- 
gentlemen  had  written  to  him  for  baronetcies:  not  for 
posts  of  service,  but  favors  barren  to  the  State.  "A 
bridle  in  his  mouth!"  Sir  Robert,  when  he  wrote  that, 
must  have  had  in  mind  a  horse  that  might  not  look 
out  of  the  stable  door  at  others  allowed  to  leap  over 
the  hedge. 

The  Anti-Repeal  speeches  of  Disraeli  pass  in  com- 
mon parlance  as  philippics  of  unmeasured  violence 
and  virulence.  I  doubt  if  any  such  brand  will  be  put 
upon  them  in  the  near  future.  Readers  who  measure 
them  against  other  weapons  of  speech  used  in  Parlia- 
mentary campaigning  will  find  that  the  difference  lies 
in  the  quality  of  the  steel,  not  in  the  quantity  of  it,  nor 
in  the  weight  and  rapidity  with  which  the  blows  fell. 
And  these  thrusts  went  home;  others,  clumsy,  miss 
their  mark;  but  in  that  expertness  is  no  malice  nor 

316 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

in  that  clumsiness  any  magnanimity.  Party  warfare 
is  party  warfare:  it  is  neitlier  brotherhood  nor  peace. 
There  are  the  usual  shibboleths;  and  a  shifty  rhetoric 
supplies  the  combatants  with  most  of  them.  Disraeli 
was  not  as  a  rule  rhetorical;  perhaps,  then,  we  notice 
the  more  his  infrequent  lapses.  When  he  said  that 
ministers  had  found  the  Whigs  bathing  and  had  taken 
their  clothes;  when  he  named  Sir  Robert  "the  great 
Parliamentary  middleman"  and  said  that  Peel's  life 
was  one  great  Appropriation  Clause,  he  raised  a 
laugh  too  cheaply;  and  he  knew  it,  for  he  himself  had 
defended  Peel's  opportunism  in  Reform.  But  this  is 
the  stage  fencing  with  which  the  House  is  familiar. 
Disraeli  merely  spoke  its  tongue,  stooping.  On  other 
occasions  he  raised  it  up  to  his  own  heights.  Nor  can 
one  wonder  if  he  furbished  up  all  manner  of  weapons 
for  this  unparalleled  battle.  Young  Englander  as  he 
was,  and  therefore  with  a  mission  of  amelioration  for 
the  manufacturing  population,  he  was  to  sit  for  an 
agricultural  constituency;  and  it  was  agriculture  that 
was  not  only  menaced  by  Free  Trade,  but  betrayed  by 
Peel. 

To  forget  these  things  is  an  idleness  which  I  will 
not  practise  by  ignoring  the  likelihood  that  a  Disraeli 
not  slighted  by  Peel  might  have  brought  a  more  indul- 
gent eye  to  Peel's  metamorphosis.  We  condemn  in 
other  nations  what  we  gloss  over  in  our  own;  repro- 
bate in  our  enefnies  the  qualities  we  tolerate  in  our 
friends,  and  see  (some  of  us)  in  our  families  beauties 
and  excellences  to  which  we  should  remain  blind  in 
the  bodies  and  minds  of  strangers.     This  indulgence 

317 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

goes  by  great  names — patriotism,  charity,  love  of  the 
brethren.  Its  converse,  therefore — the  dislike  of 
what  is  distant  from  us,  the  suspicion  with  which  we 
meet  suspicion — need  not  be  called  any  very  hard 
terms.  Disraeli  was  in  the  mood  no  doubt  to  throw 
his  dart,  but,  above  all.  Sir  Robert  gave  himself  away 
as  a  target — a  "sentient  target,"  that  was  the  pity  of 
it.  Some  of  the  quotations  commonly  made  are  flip- 
pant and  foppish  enough  without  their  context;  the 
spangle  is  handed  round,  while  the  robe  from  which  it 
is  plucked  is  thrust  aside.  The  spangle  is  no  covering. 
Between  Free  Trade  and  Protection  the  battle  is  not 
over.  These  lines  are  written  at  a  moment  when  a 
powerful  Minister  has  put  down  on  his  program  a 
preferential  tariff  between  England  and  her  Colonies. 
The  old  fiction  of  faction,  invented  in  great  part  to  do 
despite  to  Disraeli,  that  none  but  a  knave  or  a  fool 
would  combat  Free  Trade,  is  passing,  is  past.  At  least 
it  is  arguable  whether  a  nation  should  destroy  the 
home  granaries  on  which  it  may  be  driven  to  depend 
in  time  of  war  and  destroy,  too,  the  fields  from  which 
it  may  best  recruit  its  army.  A  foreseeing  British 
officer  ^  made  his  "Plea  for  the  Peasant,"  in  the 
'eighties  of  the  nineteenth  century — to  deaf  ears.  In 
his  mind's  eye,  he  saw  in  the  procession  of  peasants 
leaving  the  countryside  for  the  towns  and  the  Colo- 
nies a  Retreating  Army:  he  saw  the  White  Flag  in  the 
white  face  of  the  slums.  To  that  plea  the  Boer  war 
has  opened  all  oars,  save  the  ears  of  atrophy,  to  the 

'Lieut-General  Sir  William  Butler  in  Far  Out  (which  time  has  shown 
that  he  was  not). 

318 


Phnlnfjrnph    l>>/    Wdlkrr   .{•    fori.;  nil. 

l.<»i;|)     HKACONSKIKI.D. 

After  tlio   ii..i-ir;iil    l>y    Sir  J.   K.   Millai^.  I'.art.,  R.A., 

//(   the  possrs.sioit   of  tlir   Hon.  W .  F.  J)tinr<rs  Siiiilli.  .1/.  P. 

The  sittings  for  which  were  interrupted  by  Lord  licaconsfield's  last  illness. 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

need  of  a  yeomau  army  uow.  Nor  do  we  forsake  the 
areat  ideal  of  Free  Trade,  nor  fail  to  see  in  it  a  first 
step  toward  the  realization  of  that  dream  of  man's 
brotherhood,  which  will  haunt  the  world  till  the 
world  is  cold,  when  we  pause  to  count  the  number  of 
prophecies  prophesied  by  Free  Trade  prophets  in  the 
"forties  which  time  has  left  unfulfilled,  and  when  we 
behold  on  the  map  the  boundaries,  sheer  and  abrupt 
as  ever,  raised  everj^where  against  our  traffic  by  those, 
even  of  our  own  children,  for  whom  we  have  laid  our 
own  landmarks  down.  England  against  all  the  world: 
nay,  rather,  England  for  all  the  world,  and  all  the 
world  against  England.  Free  Trade  marks  us  then  as 
that  great  thing — a  band  of  visionaries.  But  in  the 
Parliamentary  debates  one  looks  in  vain  for  visions; 
they  are  all  about  provisions — a  very  differently 
debatable  matter. 

On,  then,  we  pass,  to  that  Third  Reading  of  the 
Repeal  of  the  Corn  Duties,  which  was  to  pass  by  the 
large  majority  of  combined  Peelites  and  the  old  party 
of  Free  Trade.  It  was  the  strangest  hour  that  ever 
struck  in  the  life  of  a  statesman:  it  was  the  hour  of 
his  triumph  and  of  his  capitulation;  an  hour  of  emo- 
tions, described  to  the  quick  in  the  Biographj/  of  Lord 
George  Be)itinek;  an  hour  in  which,  moreover,  the 
savior  of  his  country,  as  he  was  hailed  by  his  enemies 
of  old  time,  appealed  to  pity  as  a  martyr,  since  he  had 
not  been  followed  into  the  hostile  camp  by  the  whole 
of  his  former  political  friends.  "Sir,"  he  said,  with 
a  gravity  that  lent  almost  freshness  to  matter-of- 
course  phrases,  "I  foresaw  that  the  course  which  I 

319 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

have  pursued  from  a  sense  of  public  duty  would  ex- 
pose me  to  serious  sacrifices.  I  foresaw,  as  its  inevita- 
ble result,  that  I  must  forfeit  friendships  which  I  most 
highly  valued — that  I  must  interrupt  political  rela- 
tions in  which  I  felt  sincere  pride.^  But  the  smallest 
of  all  the  penalties  which  I  anticipated  were  the  con- 
tinued venomous  attacks  of  the  honorable  member 
for  Shrewsbury.-'  The  hit  was  a  good  one;  if  it  had 
not  a  strict  relation  to  facts,  at  least  it  repeated  the 
common  cry  that  had  passed  from  pen  to  pen  in  the 
party  newspapers.  The  alien  who  wrote  novels  had 
attacked  the  great  English  Minister:  let  that  be 
known  in  favor  of  the  great  English  Minister;  and  let 
the  great  English  Minister  and  the  multitude  con- 
veniently forget  the   bitterness  with  which   he  had 

»  Disraeli  says  this  better  for  Sir  Robert  than  Sir  Robert  sairl  it  for  liimself. 
The  living,  personal  passage  comes  from  the  Biography  of  Lord  George 
Bentinck,  where  Disraeli  describes  Peel's  defeat  on  the  Irish  Coercion  Bill 
in  1846  :  "But  it  was  hot  merely  their  numbers  that  attracted  the  anxious  oh- 
servation  of  the  Treasury  Bench  as  the  Protectionists  passed  in  defile  before 
the  minister  to  the  hostile  Lobby.  It  was  impossible  that  he  could  have 
marked  them  without  emotion  :  tlie  flower  of  that  great  party  which  had  been 
so  proud  to  follow  one  who  had  been  so  proud  to  lead  them.  They  were  men 
to  gain  whose  hearts  and  the  hearts  of  their  fathers  had  been  the  aim  and  ex- 
ultation of  his  life.  They  had  extended  to  him  an  unlimited  confidence  and 
an  admiration  without  stint.  They  had  stood  by  him  in  the  darkest  hour,  and 
had  borne  him  from  the  depths  of  political  despair  to  the  proudest  of  living 
positions.  Right  or  wrong,  they  were  men  of  honor,  breeding,  and  refine- 
ment, high  and  generous  character,  great  weight  and  station  in  the  country, 
which  they  had  ever  placed  at  his  disposal.  They  had  been  not  only  his  fol- 
lowers, but  his  friends;  had  joined  in  the  same  pastimes,  drank  from  the 
same  cup,  and  in  the  pleasantness  of  private  life  had  often  forgotten  together 
the  cares  and  strife  of  politics.  He  must  have  felt  something  of  this,  while 
the  Manners,  the  Somersets,  the  Bentincks,  the  Lowthers.  and  the  Len- 
noxes passed  before  him  And  those  country  gentlemen,  "those  gentlemen 
of  England,"  of  whom,  but  five  years  ago,  the  very  same  building  Avas  ring- 

320 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

formerly  beeu  assailed  by  his  new-found  friends,  by 
Cobden  and  by  Bright;  let  him  be  the  ark  of  the  na- 
tional covenant  against  which  but  one  sacrilegious 
arm  was  raised;  and  that  arm  a  traitor's.  It  is 
still  more  surprising,"  added  the  Minister,  "that 
if  such  were  his  views  of  my  character,  he  should 
have  been  ready,  as  I  think  he  was,  to  unite  his 
fortunes  with  mine  in  office,  thereby  implying  the 
strongest  proof  which  a  public  man  can  give  of 
confidence  in  the  honor  and  integrity  of  a  Minister 
of  the  Crown.-' 

Thus  was  Disraeli's  letter  of  application  for  office 
under  Sir  Kobert  in  1841  flung  into  the  arena  in  1846. 
After  five  years'  lapse  of  time,  after  the  change  of 
Sir  Kobert's  policy,  after  the  cumulative  effect  of  the 
"appropriations"  which  long  climax  had  brought  to 

ing  with  his  pride  of  being  the  leader — if  liis  heart  were  hardened  to  Sir 
Charles  Burrell,  Sir  William  Jolliffe,  Sir  Charles  Knightly,  Sir  John  Trol- 
lope,  Sir  Edward  Kerrison,  Sir  John  Tyrrell,  he  surely  must  have  had  a 
pang,  when  his  eye  rested  on  Sir  John  Yarde  Buller,  his  choice  and  pattern 
country  gentleman,  whom  he  had  himself  selected  and  invited  hut  six  years 
back  to  move  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence  in  the  Whig  Government,  in  order, 
against  the  feeling  of  the  Court,  to  install  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  their  stead. 
They  trooped  on  :  all  the  men  of  metal  and  large-acred  squires,  whose  spirit 
he  had  so  often  quickened  and  whose  counsel  he  had  so  often  solicited  in  his 
fine  Conservative  speeches  in  Whitehall  Gardens  :  Mr.  Bankes,  with  a  Par- 
liamentary name  of  two  centuries,  and  Mr.  Christopher  from  that  broad  Lin- 
colnshire which  Protection  had  created ;  and  the  Mileses  and  the  Henleys 
were  there ;  and  the  Duncombes,  the  Liddclls,  and  the  Yorkes;  and  Devon 
had  sent  there  the  stout  heart  of  Mr.  Buck — and  Wiltshire,  the  pleasant 
presence  of  Walter  Long.  Mr.  Newdegate  was  there,  whom  Sir  Robert  had 
himself  recommended  to  the  confidence  of  the  electors  of  Warwickshire,  as 
one  of  whom  he  had  the  highest  hopes ;  and  Mr.  Alderman  Thompson  was 
there,  who,  also  tlirougli  Sir  Robert's  selection,  had  seconded  the  assaiilt  upon 
the  Whigs,  led  on  liy  Sir  Jolin  Bullcr.  But  the  list  is  too  long;  or  good 
names  remain  behind." 

23  321 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

their  acme,  Disraeli  must  have  felt  at  once  the  in- 
justice of  this  sort  of  allusion  to  his  open  and  honor- 
able support  of  the  Minister  in  earlier  years.  The 
mere  fact  that  the  Minister  had  brought  into  debate 
a  confidential  letter,  with  no  bearing  whatever  on  the 
current  difficulty  his  own  recantation  had  created, 
was  scarcely  to  that  Minister's  credit;  for  such  inter- 
changes between  a  leader  and  his  followers  are  com- 
monly regarded  as  "under  seal."  Disraeli,  therefore, 
had  no  need  whatever  to  seek  shelter  under  that  de- 
nial of  having  "sought  to  unite  his  fortunes"  with 
Peel's  which  he  proceeded  to  make  in  words  that  it  is 
better  to  quote  in  full  from  Hansard: 

"Mr.  Speaker,  the  right  honorable  gentleman  hav- 
ing made  an  insinuation  against  me,  which  the  cheer 
of  his  supporters  opposite  showed  me  had  conveyed 
a  very  erroneous  impression,  I  think  the  House  will 
feel  that  under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  pre- 
sumptuous in  me  to  ask  a  moment's  attention  to  a 
subject  so  peculiarly  personal  as  the  insinuation  of 
the  right  honorable  gentleman.  I  understand  the  in- 
sinuation of  the  right  honorable  gentleman,  if  it 
meant  anything,  to  be  this — that  my  opposition,  or,  as 
he  called  it,  my  envenomed  opposition  to  him,  was  oc- 
casioned by  my  being  disappointed  of  office.  Now,  hav- 
ing been  for  five  years  in  Opposition  to  the  late  Gov- 
ernment, an  active,  though  I  well  know  not  an  influen- 
tial, supporter  of  the  right  honorable  gentleman,  and 
having  been  favored  by  him  with  an  acknowledgment 
of  his  sense  of  my  slight  services,  I  do  not  think  there 
would  have  been  anything  dishonorable  for   mc   if, 

322 


THE   rEKL-DISRAELI    ANTAGONISM 

wlieu  I  be  uew  Uoverumeut  was  formed  in  1841,  I  had 
beeu  an  applicant  for  office.  It  might  have  been  in 
good  taste  or  not,  but  at  least  there  would  have  been 
nothing  dishonorable;  but  1  can  assure  the  Uouse 
nothing  of  the  kind  ever  occurred.  I  never  shall — it 
is  totally  foreign  to  my  nature — make  an  ajiplication 
for  any  place.  But  in  1811,  when  the  Government  was 
formed — I  am  sorry  to  touch  upon  such  a  matter,  but 
insinuations  have  been  made  by  paragraphs  in  the 
newspapers,  and  now  by  charges  in  this  House — I 
have  never  adverted  to  the  subject,  but  when  these 
charges  are  made  I  must — in  1841,  when  the  Govern- 
ment was  formed,  an  individual  possessing,  as  I  be- 
lieved him  to  possess,  the  most  intimate  and  complete 
confidence  of  the  right  honorable  gentleman  called  on 
me  and  communicated  with  me. 

"'There  was  certainly  some  conversation — I  have 
never  adverted  to  these  circumstances,  anti  should  not 
now  unless  compelled,  because  they  were  under  a  seal 
(if  secrecy  confided  to  me.  There  was  some  communi- 
cution,  not  at  all  of  that  nature  which  the  House  per- 
haps supposes,  between  the  right  honorable  gentle- 
man and  me,  but  of  the  most  amicable  kind.  I  can 
only  say  this — it  was  a  transaction  not  originated  by 
me,  but  one  which  any  gentleman,  I  care  not  how  high 
his  honor  or  spirit,  might  entertain  to-morrow.  I 
need  not  go  into  my  conduct  consequent  on  that  occa- 
sion. If  I  took  my  course  in  this  House  according  to 
the  malevolent  insinuations  made,  I  do  not  mean  by 
the  right  honorable  gentleman,  but  by  others,  and  now 
they  are  sneered  at  by  him.    ('Oh,  oh!')    Some  person 

323 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

says,  'Oh,  oh!'  If  I  thought  the  majority  of  the  Hougo 
believed  that  I  was  under  the  influence  of  motives 
of  this  character  when  I  rose,  I  certainly  should  never 
rise  again  in  this  House.  ('Question!')  This  is  the  ques- 
tion— it  is  a  fair  personal  explanation.  I  say  a  com- 
munication was  made  to  me — not  authorized  by  the 
right  honorable  gentleman — he  is  not  fond  of  author- 
izing people — but  a  communication  was  made  to  me — 
though  no  doubt  there  nia3'  have  been  mistakes  and 
misconceptions.  But  with  reference  to  the  course  I 
afterward  followed,  I  declare  I  never  took  a  decided 
step  until  my  constituents,  in  consequence  of  the 
pledges  I  had  given  in  1843,  called  upon  me  for  a 
definite  opinion  on  Protection.  This  was  two  years 
after  the  circumstances  of  which  I  have  spoken  took 
place.  I  then  gave  a  silent  vote  against  the  policy  of 
the  right  honorable  gentleman.  The  year  after  that  I 
opposed  him,  but  no  one  could  call  it  an  envenomed  op- 
position. The  instant  I  did  that,  these  rumors  were 
circulated.  The  right  honorable  gentleman,  I  dare 
say,  alluded  in  a  moment  of  inadvertence  or  great 
irritation  to  this  subject.     ('Oh,  oh!') 

"To  me  it  is  perfectly  immaterial,  whatever  he  may 
have  intended.  There  is  a  line  between  public  and 
private  communications.  It  was  not  till  I  took  that 
course  that  these  rumors  were  circulated.  A  gentle- 
man, a  member  of  this  House,  who  has  allowed  me 
to  mention  his  name,  told  me  that  a  member  of  the 
Government — I  believe  a  member  of  the  Government 
—told  him  that  a  Cabinet  Minister  had  a  letter  in  his 
pocket  from  me,  asking  for  the  Ministry  at  Madrid, 

324 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

and  lliat  it  would  be  read  aloud  the  uext  time  1  at- 
tacked the  Government.  These  rumors  were  always 
circulated — they  were  put  forward  directly  or  indi- 
rectly— but  I  can  say  that  I  never  asked  a  favor  of  the 
Government,  not  even  one  of  those  mechanical  things 
which  persons  are  obliged  to  ask;  yet  these  assertions 
were  always  made  in  that  way,  though  I  never  asked 
a  favor;  and,  as  regards  myself,  I  never,  directly  or 
indirectly,  solicited  office.  Anything  more  unfounded 
than  the  rumor  circulated  to-night,  that  my  opposi- 
tion to  the  right  honorable  gentleman  has  ever  been 
influenced  by  such  considerations,  there  can  not  be. 
(Interruption.)  If  my  explanation  be  not  satisfactory, 
it  is  only  because  I  am  prevented  from  making  it.  But 
I  have  only  one  observation  to  make.  It  is  very  possi- 
ble if,  in  1841,  I  had  been  offered  office,  I  dare  say  it 
would  have  been  a  very  slight  office,  but  I  dare  say  I 
should  have  accepted  it.  I  have  not  that  high  opinion 
of  myself  to  suppose  that  the  more  important  offices 
of  the  Government  would  have  been  offered  to  my 
acceptance;  but  I  can  only  say  I  am  very  glad  I  did  not 
accept  it.  But  with  respect  to  my  being  a  solicitor 
of  office,  it  is  entirely  unfounded.  Whatever  occurred 
in  1811  between  the  right  honorable  gentleman  and 
myself  was  entirely  attributable  to  the  intervention 
of  another  gentleman  whom  I  supposed  to  be  in  the 
confidence  of  the  right  honorable  baronet,  and  I  dare 
say  it  may  have  arisen  from  a  misconception.  But  I 
do  most  unequivocally  and  upon  my  honor  declare 
that  I  never  have  for  a  moment  been  influenced  by 
such  considerations  in  the  House." 

325 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Then  Sir  Robert  rose  again: 

"The  honorable  gentleman/'  he  said,  "has  not  cor- 
rectly stated  what  I  said.  I  did  not  say  that  he  was 
influenced  in  his  opposition  by  personal  motives.  The 
words  I  said  were  these:  If  he,  reviewing  my  political 
life  previously  to  1841,  which  was  of  the  duration  of 
thirty  years,  really  believed  that  I  deserved  the  char- 
acter he  gave  of  me  to-night,  then  it  was  not  right 
that  in  1841  he  should  accept  me  as  a  leader,  and  not 
only  accept  me  as  a  leader,  but  that  he  should  have 
intimated  to  me  that  he  was  not  unwilling  to  give  that 
proof  of  confidence  that  would  have  been  implied  by 
the  acceptance  of  ofiice." 

Much  had  happened  in  those  five  intervening  years 
for  Disraeli.  He  had  pressed  into  them  more  effort 
than  five  decades  in  the  lives  of  common  men  absorb. 
But  how  could  anything  have  effaced  from  that  active 
mind  the  memory  that  he  had  solicited  "recognition'' 
from  Peel?  How  have  forgotten  Peel's  cutting  re- 
ception of  that  solicitation?  If  originally,  in  his  own 
mind,  he  refined  between  "recognition"  and  office,  and 
had  hugged  that  subtlety  meanwhile  for  a  covering 
to  his  own  confusion,  we  are  aware,  with  the  letters 
before  us,  that  any  such  distinction  of  terms  has  no 
more  definite  form  than  that  of  a  flattering  prepos- 
session. Disraeli's  words  imply  that  Lord  Lyndhurst, 
his  political  godfather,  spoke  to  Peel,  either  before 
or  after  the  letter  was  sent  from  Grosvenor  Gate,  as, 
indeed,  was  likely  enough  to  be  the  case;  and  the  let- 
ter itself  may  easily  have  been  written  at  Lord  Lynd- 
hurst's  suggestion,  private  at  the  time,  though  pru- 

326 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI   ANTAGONISM 

dently  divulged  in  1846.  Even  so,  and  at  best,  as  a 
statement  of  fact,  Disraeli's  words  betray  an  unwont- 
ed want  of  perspicuity.  On  the  main  point  they  are 
misleading;  since  he  repudiates  any  direct  applica- 
tion for  office.  The  oblique  blow  struck  at  him  came 
as  out  of  the  darkness;  it  had  no  force  or  sting  in  it  if 
faced.  But  it  had  all  the  ring  and  intent  of  a  grave 
accusation;  and  Disraeli,  in  meeting  it,  showed  an 
ambling  unpreparedness. 

Among  minor  uncertainties,  one  thing  seems  cer- 
tain: Disraeli  can  not  at  once  have  remembered  his 
letter  and  have  intended  to  deny  it.  Those  who  will 
allow  him  the  meanness  to  do  so,  mpst  3'et  hesitate  to 
allow  him  the  folly.  Were  his  letter  read,  he  had 
nothing  to  lose;  why  then  should  he  deny  it,  when  that 
denial  was  likely  to  be  followed  by  exposure,  and  ex- 
I)osure  by  ruin?  It  has  been  said  that  he  could  give 
Peel  the  lie  calmly,  knowing  that  he  could  count  on 
Peel's  magnanimity  not  to  convict  him  by  the  produc- 
tion of  the  document.  That,  of  course,  is  wild  talk. 
Peel  was  too  great  a  Parliamentarian  ("the  greatest 
member  of  Parliament  who  ever  lived,"  Disraeli  long 
afterward  called  him)  not  to  have  the  instinct  to  put 
upon  the  table  the  letter  he  had  cited.  The  very  rules 
of  the  House  indicated  that  procedure.  And,  indeed, 
in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning  following  the  de- 
bate he  was  found  by  one  of  his  household  fishing  in  a 
sea  of  papers.  Told  he  should  be  in  bed,  he  replied  he 
was  looking  for  Disraeli's  letter;  but  he  could  not  find 
it.  The  story  of  his  sitting  with  the  letter  in  his 
pocket,  challenged  to  produce  it,  yet  withholding  it 

327 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

out  of  good  feeling  for  his  opponent,  is  one  for  which 
baffled  common  sense  has  the  right  to  demand  a 
reference  to  chapter  and  verse.  The  publication  of 
the  letters,  once  found,  was  inevitable;  and  was  felt 
to  be  so  by  Lord  Rowton,  without  whose  permission 
they  could  not  have  been  printed.  That  permission 
he  gave  in  good  faith,  in  full  confidence,  and,  so  to 
say,  with  nothing  up  his  sleeve;  and  I  commit  no 
breach  of  trust  in  adding  that  among  the  unpublished 
papers  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  nothing  is  found  to  shed 
more  light  on  what  must  therefore  always  remain  an 
obscured  and  doubtful  passage  in  Disraeli's  long  and 
strenuous  political  history. 

Meanwhile,  readers  will  follow,  with  quick  sym- 
pathy, the  impulse  behind  the  words  which  Mr.  Au- 
gustine Birrell,  too  easily  adopting  the  Peel  "mag- 
nanimity" theory,  and  even  the  Disraeli-Adventurer 
theory,  delivers  from  the  enemy's  camp: 

"What  Peel  magnanimously  in  the  heat  of  conflict 
and  in  the  face  of  insult  forbore  from  doing,  Mr. 
Parker  does  in  1899.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  mag- 
nanimity that  it  should  be  complete  and  eternal.  To 
suppress  a  document  for  fifty  years  and  until  the  man 
who  wrote  it  is  dead  is  no  kindness.  No  good  has  been 
done  by  publication.  Disraeli  never  pretended  to  be 
a  man  of  nicety.  He  ate  his  peck  of  dirt  and  achieved 
his  measure  of  dignity.  In  the  vulgar  struggle  for 
existence  Disraeli  did  some  mean  and  shabby  things; 
the  letter  of  1841  was  perhaps  one  of  them,  the  denial 
of  it  in  1840  was  perhaps  another,  but  a  mean  and 
shabby  man  Disraeli  was  not,  and  his  reputation,  such 

328 


THE   PEEL-DISRAELI    ANTAGONISM 

as  it  is,  stands  just  where  it  did  before  these  dis- 
closures. The  two  letters  are  out  of  place  in  these 
stately  memorials  of  a  savior  of  society." 

Those,  credulous,  who  join  Mr.  Birrell  in  his  jaunty 
admissions  of  Disraeli's  shabbinesses,  must  be  chal- 
lenged again  to  produce  for  the  incredulous  their 
chapter  and  their  verse.  It  is  precisely  because  Dis- 
raeli is  candid,  natural,  easy,  and  self-respecting  in 
the  ordinary  course  of  his  public  and  private  life,  that 
we  decline  to  conclude,  on  halting  evidence  and  in 
defiance  of  all  human  probabilities,  that  he  was  guilty, 
in  this  Peel  episode,  of  a  mean  and — what  is  more 
to  the  point  if  you  allege  him  to  be  a  Machiavelli — 
a  purposeless  and  yet  a  risky  and  punishable  im- 
posture. 

"They  say  Peel  will  never  get  over  my  appoint- 
ment." That  was  Disraeli's  singularly  impersonal  re- 
port to  his  sister  when,  in  the  January  of  1849,  he 
became  Tory  leader  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
Impersonally  aloof  even  here,  he  colorlessly  records  a 
fact,  triumphant  in  itself  for  him,  tragic  in  itself  for 
the  other.  We  are  spared  any  "poor"  before  the  Peel, 
any  mark  of  exclamation  thereafter.  In  the  quietness 
of  the  passage  lies  its  strength.  Time,  which  never 
wearies  of  startling  the  prig  and  the  pedant  with 
displays  of  the  unexpected,  showed  Peel,  the  great  Op- 
portunist, that  he  had  missed  an  opportunity;  and  to 
us  has  since  proved  that  Disraeli,  in  wishing  to  take 
official  work  in  1841,  was  not  the  victim  of  self-illusion 
or  of  ambition  beyond  his  powers'  bounds. 


329 


BENJA]MIN    DISRAELI 

Nor  is  this  '^the  last  phase"  of  the  great  Peel-Dis- 
raeli antagonism.  Peel's  active  dislike  of  Disraeli 
Disraeli's         illustrates   afresh   a    very,  old   prejudice 

Portrait  of       against  the  Unintelligible — it  is  an  inci- 
Peel 

dent  m  the  war  waged  in  all  lands  and 
ages  by  Commonplace  against  Eomance.  Disraeli  at 
least  took  pains  to  understand  Peel,  in  the  exercise 
of  a  tolerance  from  which  he  could  not  be  deterred. 
Peel's  leadership  of  the  Tory  party  was  broken  by  Dis- 
raeli; but  Peel  lives  for  posterity  in  Disraeli's  por- 
trait in  the  Bentinck  biography.  The  hand  that  had 
exchanged  buffets  with  him  in  sharp  public  encounter 
was  the  hand  that  has  most  searchingiy  and  yet  most 
sympathetically  studied  and  reproduced  his  linea- 
ments. The  party  rank  denied  to  him  by  Peel  came  to 
him  at  the  hands  of  others,  and  made  him,  among 
other  things,  possible  as  Peel's  appraiser.  He  was 
no  longer  shut  out;  the  old  soreness  was  healed;  and 
his  magnanimity  becomes  greatly  apparent  in  his 
tribute  to  Peel's.  Let  us  here  then  piece  together 
fragments  to  make  a  perfect  whole  statue  of  Peel,  far 
better  than  that  of  marble  which  still  turns  its  back 
on  Disraeli  in  Parliament  Square: 

"Nature  had  combined  in  Sir  Eobert  Peel  many 
admirable  parts.  In  him  a  physical  frame,  incapable 
of  fatigue,  was  united  with  an  understanding  equally 
vigorous  and  flexible.  He  was  gifted  with  the  faculty 
of  method  in  the  highest  degree;  and  with  great 
powers  of  application  which  were  sustained  by  a  pro- 
digious memory;  while  he  could  communicate  his  ac- 
quisitions with  clear  and  fluent  elocution.  Such  a  man, 

330 


DISRAELIS    PORTRAIT   OF   PEEL 

under  any  circumstances  and  in  any  sphere  of  life, 
would  probably  have  become  remarkable.  Ordained 
from  his  youth  to  be  busied  with  the  affairs  of  a  great 
empire,  such  a  man,  after  long  years  of  observation, 
X)ractise,  and  perpetual  discipline  would  have  become 
what  (Sir  Kobert  Peel  was  in  the  latter  portion  of  his 
life,  a  transcendent  administrator  of  public  business 
and  a  matchless  master  of  debate  in  a  popular  assem- 
bly. In  the  course  of  time  the  method  which  was 
natural  to  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  matured  into  a  habit 
of  such  expertness  that  no  one  in  the  despatch  of 
affairs  ever  adapted  the  means  more  fitly  to  the  end; 
his  original  flexibility  had  ripened  into  consummate 
tact;  his  memory  had  accumulated  such  stores  of 
political  information  that  he  could  bring  luminously 
together  all  that  was  necessary  to  establish  or  to 
illustrate  a  subject;  while  in  the  House  of  Commons 
he  was  equally  eminent  in  exposition  and  in  reply: 
in  the  first,  distinguished  by  his  arrangement,  his 
clearness,  and  his  completeness;  in  the  second,  ready, 
ingenious,  and  adroit,  prompt  in  detecting  the  weak 
points  of  his  adversary  and  dexterous  in  extricating 
himself  from  an  embarrassing  position. 

"Thus  gifted  and  thus  accomplished.  Sir  Robert 
Peel  had  a  great  deficiency;  he  was  without  imagina- 
tion. Wanting  imagination,  he  wanted  prescience. 
No  one  was  more  sagacious  when  dealing  with  the 
circumstances  before  him;  no  one  penetrated  the 
present  with  more  acuteness  and  accuracy.  ITis  judg- 
ment was  faultless  provided  he  had  not  to  deal  with 
the  future.    Thus  it  happened  through  his  long  career, 

331 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

that  while  he  always  was  looked  upon  as  the  most 
prudent  and  safest  of  leaders,  he  ever,  after  a  pro- 
tracted display  of  admirable  tactics,  concluded  his 
campaigns  by  surrendering  at  discretion.  He  was  so 
adroit  that  he  could  prolong  resistance  even  beyond 
its  term,  but  so  little  foreseeing  that  often  in  the  very 
triumph  of  his  maneuvers  he  found  himself  in  an  un- 
tenable position.  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  Roman 
Catholic  Emancipation,  Parliamentary  Reform,  and 
the  Abrogation  of  our  Commercial  System,  were  all 
carried  in  haste  or  in  passion  and  without  conditions 
or  mitigatory  arrangements.  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  a 
peculiarity  which  is  perhaps  natural  with  men  of  very 
great  talents  who  have  not  the  creative  faculty;  he  had 
a  dangerous  sympathy  with  the  creations  of  others. 
Instead  of  being  cold  and  wary,  as  was  commonly  sup- 
posed, he  was  impulsive  and  even  inclined  to  rashness. 
When  he  was  ambiguous,  unsatisfactory,  reserved, 
tortuous,  it  was  that  he  was  perplexed,  that  he  did  not 
see  his  way,  that  the  routine  which  he  had  admirably 
administered  failed  him,  and  that  his  own  mind  was 
not  constructed  to  create  a  substitute  for  the  custom 
which  was  crumbling  away.  Then  he  was  ever  on  the 
lookout  for  new  ideas,  and  when  he  embraced  them  he 
did  so  with  eagerness  and  often  with  precipitancy;  he 
always  carried  these  novel  plans  to  an  extent  which 
even  their  projectors  or  chief  promoters  had  usually 
not  anticipated;  as  was  seen  for  example  in  the  settle- 
ment of  the  currency.  Although  apparently  wrapped 
up  in  himself  and  supposed  to  be  egotistical,  except 
in    seasons    of    rare    exhaltation,    as    in    the    years 

332 


iiii;   Mi).\rMi;.\|-    i.\    \\i:stmi.\sti:ii   aiu'.i;v. 

JJo.sigufU  by  .Sir  Jklgar  Hoelini,  R.A. 


DISRAELI'S   PORTRAIT   OF   PEEL 

1844-5,  when  he  reeled  under  the  favor  of  the 
Court,  the  homage  of  the  Continent,  and  the  servil- 
ity of  Parliament,  he  was  really  deficient  in  self- 
confidenoe. 

"After  a  great  disaster  it  was  observable  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  that  his  mind  seemed  always  to  expand. 
His  life  was  one  of  perpetual  education.  No  one  more 
clearly  detected  the  mistakes  which  he  had  made  or 
changed  his  course  under  such  circumstances  with 
more  promptness;  but  it  was  the  past  and  the  present 
that  alone  engrossed  his  mind.  After  the  catastrophe 
of  '30,  he  broke  away  from  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
and  announced  to  his  friends  with  decision  that  hence- 
forth he  would  serve  under  no  man.  There  are  few 
things  more  remarkable  in  Parliamentary  history 
than  the  manner  in  which  Sir  Robert  Peel  headed  an 
Opposition  for  ten  years  without  attempting  to  form 
the  opinions  of  his  friends  or  instilling  into  them  a 
single  guiding  principle,  but  himself  displaying  all 
that  time  on  every  subject  of  debate  wise  counsels,  ad- 
ministrative skill,  and  accomplished  powers  of  discus- 
sion. He  could  give  to  his  friends  no  guiding  princi- 
ple, for  he  had  none,  and  he  kept  sitting  on  those 
benches  till  somebody  should  give  him  one. 

"After  destroying  the  Tory  party  in  1846,  he  fell 
a-thinking  again  over  the  past  and  the  present  as  he 
did  after  his  fall  in  '30,  and  again  arrived  at  a  great 
conclusion.  In  '30  he  said  he  would  act  no  longer  as  a 
subordinate;  in  '46  he  said  he  would  act  no  longer  as 
a  partizan.  ...  No  one  knew  better  than  Sir 
Robert  Peel  that  without  party  connection  that  Par- 

333 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

liamentary  government  which  he  so  much  admired 
would  be  intolerable;  it  would  be  at  the  same  time  the 
weakest  and  the  most  corrupt  government  in  the 
world.  In  casting  this  slur  upon  party,  Sir  Robert 
Peel  meant  only  to  degrade  the  combinations  of  which 
he  had  experience  and  by  which  he  had  risen.  Ex- 
cluded from  power  which  he  ought  to  have  wielded 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  he  sat  on  his  solitary  bench 
revolving  the  past.  At  sixty  he  began  to  comprehend 
his  position.  The  star  of  Manchester  seemed  as  it 
were  to  rise  from  the  sunset  of  Oxford,  and  he  felt  he 
had  sacrificed  his  natural  career  to  an  obsolete  edu- 
cation and  a  political  system  for  which  he  could  not 
secure  even  an  euthanasia. 

"Sir  Robert  Peel  had  a  bad  manner,  of  which  he 
was  sensible;  he  was  by  nature  very  shy;  but,  forced 
early  in  life  into  eminent  positions,  he  had  formed 
an  artificial  manner,  haughtily  stiff  or  exuberantly 
bland,  of  which  generally  speaking  he  could  not  di- 
vest himself.  There  were,  however,  occasions  when  he 
did  succeed  in  this,  and  on  these,  usually  when  he  was 
alone  with  an  individual  whom  he  wished  to  please, 
his  manner  was  not  only  unaffectedly  cordial  but  he 
could  even  charm.  When  he  was  ridiculed  by  his  op- 
ponents in  '41,  as  one  little  adapted  for  a  Court,  and 
especially  the  Court  of  a  Queen,  those  who  knew  him 
well  augured  different  results  from  his  high  promo- 
tion, and  they  were  right.  But  generally  speaking, 
he  was  never  at  his  ease  and  never  very  content  ex- 
cept in  the  House  of  Commons.  Even  there  he  was 
not  natural,  though  there  the  deficiency  was  compen- 

334 


DISRAELI'S   PORTRAIT   OF   PEEL 

sated  for  by  his  unrivaled  facility,  which  passed  cur- 
rent with  the  vulgar  eye  for  the  precious  quality  for 
which  it  was  substituted.  He  had  obtained  a  com- 
plete control  over  his  temper,  which  was  by  nature 
somewhat  fiery.  His  disposition  was  good;  there  was 
nothing  petty  about  him;  he  was  very  free  from  ran- 
cor; he  was  not  only  not  vindictive,  but  partly  by 
temperament  and  still  more  perhaps  by  discipline,  he 
was  even  magnanimous. 

"For  so  very  clever  a  man  he  was  deficient  in  the 
knowledge  of  human  nature.  The  prosperous  routine 
of  his  youth  was  not  favorable  to  the  development  of 
this  faculty.  It  was  never  his  lot  to  struggle;  although 
forty  years  in  Parliament,  it  is  remarkable  that  Sir 
Robert  Peel  never  represented  a  popular  constituency 
or  stood  a  contested  election.  As  he  advanced  in  life 
he  was  always  absorbed  in  thought;  and  abstraction 
is  not  friendly  to  a  perception  of  character,  or  to  a  fine 
appreciation  of  the  circumstances  of  the  hour.  .  .  . 
After  the  Reform  of  the  House  of  Commons,  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  naturally  anxious  to  discover  who 
was  to  be  the  rival  of  his  life,  and  it  is  noticeable  that 
he  was  not  successful  in  his  observations.  He  never 
did  justice  to  Lord  John  Russell  until  he  found  Lord 
John  was  not  only  his  rival,  but  his  successful  one, 
and  then,  according  to  his  custom  and  his  nature,  he 
did  the  present  Minister  of  England  full  justice.^  No 
person  could  be  more  sensible  of  the  grave  import  of 
the  events  in  Canada  which  occurred  on  his  accession 

'  "Lord  .Tolm  Tlissoll  has  written  me  a  very  charming  letter  about  the 
Political  Biography"  wrote  Disraeli  to  his  sister,  January  2G,  1852. 

335 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

to  office  in  '34  than  Sir  Robert  Peel.  They  were  the 
commencement  of  great  calamities  and  occasioned 
him  proportionate  anxiety.  It  was  obvious  that 
everything  depended  on  the  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual sent  out  by  the  metropolis  to  encounter  this 
emergency.  The  highest  qualities  of  administration 
were  demanded.  After  much  pondering,  Sir  Robert 
selected  the  amiable  and  popular  Lord  Canterbury. 
It  was  entirely  his  own  selection,  and  it  was  perhaps 
the  most  unfit  that  could  be  made.  But  Sir  Robert 
Peel  associated  Lord  Canterbury  with  the  awful  au- 
thority of  twenty  years  of  the  Speaker's  chair.  That 
authority  had  controlled  him,  and  of  course  he 
thought  it  must  subdue  the  Canadians.  It  was  like  a 
grown-up  man  in  the  troubles  of  life  going  back  for 
advice  to  his  schoolmaster.     .     .     . 

"As  an  orator  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  perhaps  the 
most  available  talent  that  has  ever  been  brought  to 
bear  in  the  House  of  Commons.  We  have  mentioned 
that  both  in  exposition  and  in  reply  he  was  equally 
eminent.  His  statements  were  perspicuous,  complete, 
and  dignified;  when  he  combated  the  objections  or 
criticized  the  propositions  of  an  opponent,  he  was 
adroit  and  acute;  no  speaker  ever  sustained  a  process 
of  argumentation  in  a  public  assembly  more  lucidly, 
and  none  as  debaters  have  united  in  so  conspicuous 
a  degree  prudence  with  promptness.  In  the  higher 
effects  of  oratory  he  was  not  successful.  His  vocabu- 
lary was  ample  and  never  mean;  but  it  was  neither 
rich  nor  rare.  His  speeches  will  afford  no  sentiment 
of  surpassing  grandeur  or  beauty  that  will  linger  in 

336 


DISRAELI'S   PORTRAIT   OF   PEEL 

the  ears  of  coming  generations.  He  embalmed  no 
great  political  truth  in  immortal  words.  Ilis  flights 
were  ponderous;  he  soared  with  the  wing  of  the  vul- 
ture rather  than  the  plume  of  the  eagle;  and  his 
perorations  when  most  elaborate  were  most  unwieldy. 
In  pathos  he  was  quite  deficient;  when  he  attempted 
to  touch  the  tender  passions,  it  was  painful.  His  face 
became  distorted,  like  that  of  a  woman  who  wants  to 
cry  but  can  not  succeed.  Orators  certainly  should  not 
shed  tears,  but  there  are  moments  when,  as  the 
Italians  sa^',  the  voice  should  weep.  The  taste  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  highly  cultivated,  but  it  was  not  orig- 
inally fine;  he  had  no  wit;  but  he  had  a  keen  sense  of 
the  ridiculous  and  an  abundant  vein  of  genuine  humor. 
Notwithstanding  his  artificial  reserve,  he  had  a 
hearty  and  a  merry  laugh;  and  sometimes  his  mirth 
was  uncontrollable.  He  was  gifted  with  an  admirable 
organ;  perhajis  the  finest  that  has  been  heard  in  the 
House  in  our  days,  unless  we  except  the  thrilling  tones 
of  O'Connell.  Sir  Robert  Peel  also  modulated  his  voice 
with  great  skill.  His  enunciation  was  very  clear, 
though  somewhat  marred  by  provincialisms.  His 
great  deficiency  was  want  of  nature,  w^hich  made  him 
often  api^ear  even  with  a  good  cause  more  plausible 
than  persuasive  and  more  specious  than  convincing. 
He  may  be  said  to  have  gradually  introduced  a  new 
style  into  the  House  of  Commons  which  was  suited  to 
the  age  in  which  he  chiefly  flourished  and  to  the  novel 
elements  of  the  assembly  which  he  had  to  guide.  He 
had  to  deal  with  greater  details  than  his  predecessors, 

and  he  had  in  many  instances  to  address  those  who 
23  337 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

were  deficient  in  previous  knowledge.  Something  of 
the  lecture,  therefore,  entered  into  his  displays.  This 
style  may  be  called  the  didactic.'' 

In  the  next  passage,  as  in  one  that  has  gone  before, 
we  seem  to  get  autobiography'  rather  than  biography; 
and  close  as  we  are  to  Peel,  we  are  closer  to  Disraeli: 
''It  is  often  mentioned  by  those  political  writers  who 
on  such  a  subject  communicate  to  their  readers  their 
theories  and  not  their  observations  of  facts,  that  there 
was  little  sympathy  between  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  the 
great  aristocratic  party  of  which  he  was  the  leader; 
that  on  the  one  side  there  was  a  reluctant  deference, 
and  on  the  other  a  guidance  without  sentiment.  But 
this  was  quite  a  mistake.  An  aristocracy  hesitates 
before  it  j^elds  its  confidence,  but  it  never  does  so 
grudgingly.  In  political  connections  under  such 
circumstances  the  social  feeling  mingles  and  the 
principle  of  honor  which  governs  gentlemen.  Such 
a  following  is  usually  cordial  and  faithful.  An  aris- 
tocracy is  rather  apt  to  exaggerate  the  qualities  and 
magnify  the  importance  of  a  plebeian  leader.  They 
are  prompted  to  do  this  both  by  a  natural  feeling  of 
self-love  and  by  a  sentiment  of  generosity.  Far  from 
any  coldness  subsisting  between  Sir  Robert  Peel  and 
the  great  houses  which  had  supported  him  through  his 
long  career,  there  never  was  a  minister  who  was  treat- 
ed with  such  nice  homage,  it  may  be  said  with  such 
affectionate  devotion.  The  proudest  in  the  land  were 
prouder  to  be  his  friends,  and  he  returned  the  feeling 
to  its  full  extent  and  in  all  its  sincerity." 

The  sketch  of  Peel's  personal  appearance  is  then 

338 


DISUAELFS    PORTRAIT   OF    PEEL 

drawu  by  a  iiiastor-baiid:  ''Sir  Kobort  Pod  was  a  very 
good-lookiu<;'  man.  lie  was  tall,  aud,  though  of  latter 
years  he  had  become  portly,  had  to  the  last  a 
comely  presence.  Thirty  years  ago,  when  he  was 
young  and  lithe  with  curling  brown  hair,  he  had  a  very 
radiant  expression  of  countenance.  His  brow  was 
very  distinguished,  not  so  much  for  its  intellectual  de- 
velopment, although  that  was  of  a  very  high  order,  as 
for  its  remarkably  frank  expression,  so  different  from 
his  character  in  life.  The  expression  of  the  brow 
might  even  be  said  to  amount  to  beauty.  The  rest  of 
the  features  did  not,  however,  sustain  this  impression. 
The  eye  was  not  good;  it  was  slj^,  and  he  had  an 
awkward  habit  of  looking  askance.  He  had  the 
fatal  defect  also  of  a  long  upper  lip,  and  his  mouth 
was  compressed.  One  can  not  say  of  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
notwithstanding  his  unrivaled  powers  of  despatching 
affairs,  that  he  was  the  greatest  minister  that  this 
country  ever  produced,  because,  twice  placed  at  the 
helm,  and  on  the  second  occasion  with  the  Court  and 
the  Parliament  equally  devoted  to  him,  he  never  could 
maintain  himself  in  power.  Nor,  notwithstanding  his 
consummate  Parliamentary  tactics,  can  he  be  de- 
scribed as  the  greatest  party  leader  that  ever  flour- 
ished among  us,  for  he  contrived  to  destroy  the  most 
compact,  powerful,  and  devoted  party  that  ever  fol- 
lowed a  British  statesman.  Certainly,  notwithstand- 
ing his  great  sway  in  debate,  we  can  not  recognize 
him  as  our  greatest  orator,  for  in  many  of  the  supreme 
requisites  of  oratory  he  was  singularly  deficient.  But 
what  he  really  was,  and  what  posterity  will  acknowl- 

339 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

edge  him  to  have  been,  is  the  greatest  member  of  Par- 
liament that  ever  lived. 

"Peace  to  his  ashes!  His  name  will  be  often  ap- 
pealed to  in  that  scene  which  he  loved  so  well,  and 
never  without  homage  even  by  his  opponents!" 

"I  have  had  great  success  in  society  this  year.  I 
am  as  popular  with  the  dandies  as  I  was  hated  by  the 
4.  A  J      4.       ..  second-rate  men.     I  make  mv  wav  easily 

"Adventurer.  '  ^  ^  j 

in  the  highest  set,  where  there  is  no  envy, 

malice,  etc.,  and  where  they  like  to  admire  and  be 
amused."  Thus  wrote  Disraeli  in  a  Home  Letter  June 
19,  1834. 

Just  as  the  close  borough  was  made  a  political  ad- 
vantage to  the  State  by  the  return  of  young  men  of 
genius  who  would  not  have  met  at  the  hands  of  a 
crowd  the  recognition  they  received  from  a  magnate 
— so,  too,  the  great  world,  set  above  social  strivings, 
w^as  able  to  take  to  itself  the  Alien,  and  to  fear  no  con- 
sequences. The  people  in  the  crowd,  the  Crokers,  the 
Haywards,  and  the  Bullers,  had  to  jostle  and  push, 
if  this  young  man  was  to  be  kept  out  of  the  Royal  en- 
closure so  long  as  they  were  not  admitted  within.  Yet 
even  among  "the  great,"  political  and  religious,  if  not 
social,  prejudice  had  to  be  encountered.  "My  parents, 
I  believe,  regarded  Dizzy  as  little  better,  if  better, 
than  an  adventurer,"  says  Lord  Ronald  Gower.  But 
as  he  only  "thinks," and  is  not  sure,  we  give  that  Duke 
and  Duchess  of  Sutherland  the  benefit  of  the  doubt. 
They  were  very  eager,  one  may  remark,  to  be  his  hosts 
in  the  later  years  of  his  life.    To  Lord  Selborne,  Dis- 

340 


•ADVENTURER ' 

raeli  was  "au  actor  iu  a  mask  he  uover  took  off"':  what 
hiwyers  in  general,  and  a  certain  Lord  Chancellor  iu 
particular,  were  to  Disraeli,  has  been  already  set 
forth.  If  Disraeli  did  not  please  the  "High,''  ueither 
did  he  please  the  ''Low,"  so  that  Lord  Shaftesbury, 
surnamed  the  "Good,"  esteemed  him  "a  leper  without 
principle,  without  feeling,  without  regard  to  any- 
thing, human  or  divine,  beyond  his  personal  ambition." 
This,  too,  was  the  opinion  I  long  ago  heard  expressed 
in  almost  similar  words  by  John  Bright — the  John 
Bright  whom  Lord  Shaftesbury  found  it  disagreeable 
to  meet  because  he  was  not  a  gentleman.  Here,  at 
any  rate,  in  opinion,  gentlemanly  or  not,  they  did 
meet,  and  even  embrace.  Whether  Bright,  had  he 
lived  longer,  would  have  been  converted  to  Disraeli, 
may  be  doubted;  but  Lord  Shaftesbury,  introducing  a 
dei>utation  of  workmen  to  Lord  Beaconsfield,  on  his 
elevation,  to  thank  him  for  his  services  to  Labor  dur- 
ing his  career  in  the  Lower  House  of  Parliament, 
seemed  to  be  in  a  softened  mood.  Disraeli,  w^ho  had 
once  been  stung  into  an  allusion  to  the  "phylacteries" 
of  Lord  Shaftesbury,  was  of  course  happy  in  paying  to 
him  at  last  a  tribute  that  takes  count  of  all  his  virtues 
and  ignores  all  his  defects.  He,  the  misunderstood, 
could  understand;  and  ready  as  men  were  to  misjudge 
him,  even  more  ready  was  he  to  forgive.  That  he  felt 
a  general  soreness,  however,  about  this  method  of 
prejudicing  him,  early  and  late,  is  certain. 

"Now,  gentlemen,"  he  said  in  1850,  "I  have  had 
some  experience  in  public  life,  and  during  that  time 
I  have  seen  a  great  deal  done,  and  more  pretended,  by 

341 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

what  are  called  ^moral'  means;  and,  being  naturally 
of  a  thoughtful  temperament,  I  have  been  induced  to 
analyze  what  'moral'  means  are.  I  will  tell  you  what 
I  have  found  them  to  consist  of:  first,  enormous  lying; 
second,  inexhaustible  boasting;  third,  intense  selfish- 
ness." 

The  cartoons  that  illustrated  the  popular  air — and 
that  was  "adventurer" — in  Punch  week  by  week  i^ro- 
duced  from  him  no  word  except  the  word  that  secured 
a  pension  for  the  widow  of  the  lampooner.  All  the 
weary  round  the  legend  went.  His  own  uncle,  Mr. 
Basevi,  the  Parliamentary  lawyer,  utters  it  under  his 
breath;  and  Medicine  chimes  in  when  Sir  William  Gull 
is  asked  by  somebody  at  the  Athenaeum  Club  why  on 
earth  Disraeli  should  trust  himself  to  the  hands  of  a 
quack  (naming  a  homoeopathic  doctor),  and  the  allo- 
path replies:  ^'Similia  similibus  curantur.^^  One  need 
not  trace  the  legend  further:  it  had  its  natural  birth 
in  an  Island  that  suspects  strangers,  yet  showed  itself 
receptive  enough  in  the  long  run  to  allow  itself  to  be 
ruled  by  Disraeli.  His  own  hand  has  indicated  the 
difference  between  Parisian  homage  to  intellect  and 
London's  long  distrust  of  it.  He  knew  that  wit  itself 
is  sometimes  reckoned  an  offense.  "A  great  man  in 
England  is  generally  the  dullest"  is  his  own  deliberate 
word.  Yet  perhaps  London,  slower  than  Paris  to  re- 
ceive, will  be  slower  to  forget,  and  the  primrose  fes- 
tival may  still  flourish  when  the  violet  festival  of  Dis- 
raeli's old  friend  has  fallen  into  disuse.  The  Tory 
party  may  be  "the  stupid  party"  that  Mr.  Bright  said 
they  were,  and  they  might  need  to  be  "educated,"  as 

342 


"ADVENTURER" 

Dif^raeli  said  he  had  educated  them  to  Household  Suf- 
frage. All  the  more  may  they  now  put  forward  their 
claim  to  receptiveness  in  the  recognition  of  merit 
where  merit  was  least  likely  to  be  apparent  to  hedge- 
bound  eyes.  Disraeli  overcame  all  distrust  of  him  as 
an  alien.    He  was  the  idol  of  the  Tories  when  he  died. 

No  doubt  the  constantly  bruited-about  story  that 
Disraeli  began  life  without  political  convictions  ag- 
gravated the  distrust  initially  felt  for  an  alien.  That 
legend  dies  hard.  I  take  up  a  recent  book  of  Memoirs, 
those  of  Sir  Edward  Blount,  who  begins  a  passage 
with  the  alluring  statement,  "I  knew  Disraeli  for 
many  years."  Sir  Edward  goes  on  to  say  that  he  first 
met  the  future  Prime  Minister  during  the  general 
election  of  1841,  when  Disraeli  stood  for  Shrewsbury, 
a  town  in  which  Sir  Edward's  family — the  owners  of 
Mawley  Hall  in  Shropshire — took  a  neighborly  in- 
terest. Sir  Edward,  writing  as  a  Liberal,  tells  the 
story  thus: 

"Disraeli,  who  had  formerly  sat  for  Maidstone, 
was  on  this  occasion  returned  for  Shrewsbury  in  the 
Liberal  interest.  The  contest  had  been  a  particularly 
warm  one,  and,  in  order  to  celebrate  our  triumph,  we 
had  a  public  dinner,  with  Disraeli  in  the  chair.  The 
usual  patriotic  toasts  were  followed  by  that  to  which 
Disraeli,  who  was  expected  to  make  the  speech  of  the 
evening,  was  to  reply,  'The  Members  for  the  County.' 
As  soon  as  the  new  member  was  called  upon  to  speak, 
a  man  in  the  company  rose  and  got  on  to  the  table. 
He  spoke  violently  and  in  a  loud  discordant  voice,  and, 
pointing  to  the  table  of  honor,  at  which  it  happened 

343 


BENJA]MIN    DISRAELI 

thirteen  were  sitting,  exclaimed  witli  great  heat, 
'Wherever  thirteen  men  sit  down  to  dinner,  there  is  a 
traitor  amongst  them,'  and  then  with  a  sudden  ges- 
ture of  contempt,  he  turned  to  the  guest  of  the  even- 
ing and  added,  'There  sits  the  man!'  It  is  impossible 
for  me  to  describe  the  commotion  which  ensued.  The 
man  was  instantly  pulled  down  and  expelled  igno- 
miniously  from  the  room.  Disraeli  rose  to  speak,  but 
was  powerless  to  quell  the  tumult.  The  turmoil  grew 
into  an  open  fight,  and  the  proceedings  ended  ab- 
ruptly in  the  utmost  confusion.  It  so  happened  that 
a  very  short  time  afterward  Disraeli  changed  his 
politics  and  his  party,  and  so  the  prophecy  became 
true." 

The  bare  fact  is  that  Disraeli  stood  as  a  Tory,  not 
as  a  Liberal,  for  Shrewsbury  in  1841,  and  as  a  Tory 
was  returned,  together  with  Mr.  Tomline,  Q.C.  There 
was  a  banquet  indeed,  but  it  was  a  Tory  banquet,  at 
which  Mr.  Disraeli,  cheered  to  the  echo  at  every  point, 
told  his  supporters  that  ''he  had  that  day  had  the  sat- 
isfaction of  writing  to  Sir  Robert  Peel  to  inform  him 
that  Shrewsbury  had  done  its  duty.  It  would  revive 
the  hon.  baronet's  hopes  and  add  to  his  confidence  to 
know  the  ancient  town  of  Shrewsbury  had  responded 
to  his  call."  How  account  for  the  detailed  hallucina- 
tions of  that  being,  beloved  of  the  historian,  the  eye- 
and  ear-witness?  One  can  only  surmise,  so  much  non- 
sense being  talked  about  Disraeli  in  those  days,  that 
men  actually  began  to  believe  the  stories  that  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth;  nay,  even  to  think  they  had 
themselves  been  present  at  scenes  which  never  were. 

344 


i 


"ADVENTURER " 

Ladj  Ashbui'tou  used  to  say  that  as  a  child  she  de- 
clared she  remembered  being  present  at  her  mother's 
wedding;  and  that,  though  she  was  whipped  for  mak- 
ing the  statement,  she  never  ceased  to  believe  it.  It 
is  equally  difficult  to  divest  the  Sir  Edward  Blounts 
in  Disraelian  annals  of  the  imaginings  that  make  the 
fanc}^  portrait  in  their  own  inner  minds. 

Regarding  the  careers  and  acts  of  the  politicians 
who  iDreceded,  accompanied,  and  followed  Disraeli — 
all  the  contortions,  conversions,  and  coalitions  of 
Burke,  Peel,  Aberdeen,  Palmerston,  Stanley,  Glad- 
stone, and  Chamberlain — we  recognize  how  hard  it  is 
to  affix  to  the  bales  of  political  merchandise  the  de- 
cisive labels  of  Whig  and  Tor}^,  and  may  well  ask  with 
Lady  Teazle:  "Don't  j'ou  think  we  might  leave  con- 
sistency out  of  the  question?"  Nature  herself  is  a 
perennial  inconsistency.  The  march  of  events,  the 
growth  in  the  consciousness  of  the  world,  the  awaken- 
ing of  Science  and  that  quick  and  moving  spirit  which 
the  poets  and  the  thinkers,  the  seers  and  the  savers, 
have  sent  forth;  these  are  forces  which  can  not  be 
ignored  by  any  leader  of  men.  By  the  leader  of  men, 
moreover,  they  must  be  seen  and  accepted  more  than 
by  his  fellows.  They  must  be  verified  by  the  experi- 
ences of  his  own  individual  growth,  transforming 
dream  into  certainty,  theory  into  conviction.  To  such 
a  man  mutation  is  not  tergiversation;  development  is 
not  departure,  the  step  forward — or  the  step  aside, 
at  moments  the  step  backward,  even  a  feint  of  flight — 
is  all  part  of  steady  spiral  progress  upward.  "Much 
has  happened  since  then"  is  a  colloquialism  in  which 

345 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Disraeli  flung  across  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons the  burden  of  his  philosophy  of  political  life. 
Disraeli  distrusted  the  morality  of  people  who  talked 
of  their  own  moral  aims.  Hence  one  hesitates  to 
claim  the  Good  of  the  People — the  people's  health  and 
the  people's  mental,  even  more  than  material,  prog- 
ress— as  the  object  which  Disraeli  the  publicist  kept 
close  in  view,  from  the  early  days  of  his  candidature 
at  Wycombe  to  the  last  hour  of  his  life.  With  the 
humbug  of  hustings  speeches  in  our  ears,  we  pause  on 
such  facile  w^ords:  they  are  murmurs  of  hypocrisy, 
reminiscent  of  the  fooleries  that  pass  as  the  accepted 
conventions  of  that  "dull  trade"  of  politics  wherever 
the  ear  of  the  Islanders  in  multitude  must  be  flattered 
and  tickled. 

To  w^hat  extent  Disraeli  consented  to  play  that 
game,  to  take  advantage  of  ruse  and  phrase  to  harass 
or  to  nonplus  his  opponents,  is  an  enthralling  study 
enough,  especially  during  his  mid-career;  but  it  is 
a  study  that  pertains  rather  to  the  public  life  of  Eng- 
land than  to  his  own  individual  history.  Party  gov- 
ernment was  the  only  instrument  to  his  hand.  He 
began  with  an  effort  for  freedom  from  party  tram- 
mels, and  could  not  find  a  Nationalist,  rather  than  a 
Whig  or  a  Tory,  seat.  In  his  mid-career  Disraeli  the 
man  and  cosmopolitan  went  now  and  again  in  the  cus- 
tody of  Disraeli  the  leader  of  Tories  who  would  not, 
perhaps  could  not,  dance  at  a  moment's  notice  to  a 
new  piping — some  had  no  ear  for  music,  others  did 
not  recognize  the  tune.  But  if,  on  the  matter  of  Re- 
form for  instance,  Disraeli  moved  slowly,  hoping  that 

346 


"ADVENTURER " 

the  weakest  man  of  his  regimeut  might  so  keep  step, 
and  applied  his  chain  of  followers  to  the  control  of 
social  forces  with  an  eye  on  its  weakest  link,  never 
did  he  allow  party  exigency  to  embarrass  his  op- 
ponents when  England's  fame  or  safety  was  in  ques- 
tion, never  in  war-time  was  he  other  than  a  Nationalist 
indeed.  And  this  shall  be  said  by  any  student  of  the 
half-century  of  jiolitics  his  career  covers:  that  his  op- 
ponents throughout  were  cleverer  than  he  at  the  game 
of  bluff;  not  that  they  knew  the  constituencies  better, 
but  that  they  were  more  willing  than  he  to  pander  to 
popular  passions;  readier  to  confuse  issues,  to  play  to 
the  pocket  under  guise  of  feeding  the  soul,  to  give  high 
names  to  low  motives,  to  secure  a  vicious  success  in 
the  name  of  virtue,  to  confound  a  mundane  plea  with 
a  message  from  heaven,  and  to  adopt  tow^ard  op- 
ponents in  success  the  bearing  of  martyrs;  in  defeat, 
of  the  Lord's  avengers.  By  these  means  w'ere  com- 
passed his  confusion  and  that  of  his  host,  at  the  close 
of  his  career. 

A^ery  awkward  are  the  consequences  of  this  form 
of  fanaticism  in  public  affairs.  "I  doubt  if  any  man 
ever  lived  in  this  country  who  was  more  systematic- 
ally calumniated  and  misrepresented  than  Lord  Bea- 
consfield,"  Lord  George  Hamilton  has  said.  "It  really 
seemed  at  one  time  as  if  there  were  a  conspiracy 
among  a  certain  number  of  people  to  misrepresent 
everything  he  said  and  to  misinterpret  everything  he 
did.  So,  little  by  little,  by  this  dint  of  constant  re- 
iteration, an  impression  was  formed  outside,  by  those 
who  did  not  know  Lord  Beaconsfield's  character,  ob- 

347 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

jects,  and  past  career,  utterly  at  variance  from  truth. 
He  was  represented  as  a  cynical,  reckless  man,  think- 
ing only  of  his  aggrandizement,  and  read3'  for  that 
purpose  to  involve  his  country  in  war.  I  had  the 
honor  of  the  most  personal  acquaintance  with  him, 
and  I  can  say  this  truly — that  I  never  met  a  kinder 
man  in  private,  nor  a  more  patriotic  and  prescient 
man  in  his  public  capacity.'' 

To  a  reviewer  of  i^i/bil  he  wrote  on  June  2,  1845: 
^'I  was  in  hopes,   all  yesterday,  that  I  might  have 

„^  ^.,  „  been  able  in  person  to  thank  vou  for  vour 

"Sybil.  ^  ^  ^ 

charming  notice  of  aSV/?>//,  so  pleasing  to 
its  author  in  every  respect,  and  now  I  fear  my  visit 
to  3'ou  must  be  indefinitel}^  x^ostponed,  as,  after  numer- 
ous miraculous  escapes,  I  am  bagged  for  a  Kailway 
Committee  which  has  every  prospect  of  sitting  every 
daj'  through  June  and  July! 

"Yours  faithfully, 

"D." 

"In  Sybil;  or,  The  Two  Natious,  I  considered  the 
Condition  of  the  People.  At  that  time  the  Chartist 
agitation  was  still  fresh  in  the  public  memory,  and  its 
repetition  was  far  from  improbable.  I  had  mentioned 
to  my  friend,  the  late  Thomas  Duncombe,  who  was 
my  friend  before  I  entered  the  House  of  Commons, 
something  of  what  I  was  contemplating,  and  he 
offered  and  obtained  for  my  perusal  the  whole  of  the 
correspondence  of  Feargus  O'Connor,  when  conductor 
of  the  Northern  Star,  with  the  leaders  and  chief  actors 
of  the  Chartist  movement.  I  had  visited  and  observed 
with  care   all   the  localities  introduced;   and   as   an 

348 


^gyiy^t^^-U^^       "'^^         "^^C^elloiC^  ^^2ux^ 


"^P 


^ 


-^ 


FACSIMILE   OF   LETTER   FROM   DISRAELI   TO   A   REVIEWER   OF 

&YBlh 


349 


jU^:^'-tx.^^'Z^         ^-~~g,yt^^  ^<:-*-.-'-^^C>i_> 


^<^ 


«— «_--^       cr- 


FACSIMILE   OF   LETTER    FROM    DISRAELI   TO   A   REVIEWER    OF 

SYBIL 


350 


Jt^-^^^  C_^ 


FACSIMILE    OF    LETTER    FROM   DISRAELI   TO  A  REVIEWER  OF 

SYBIL 


351 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

accurate  and  never  exaggerated  picture  of  a  remark- 
able period  in  our  domestic  history  the  pages  of  Si/hil 
may,  I  venture  to  believe,  be  consulted  with  confi- 
dence." 

That  was  Disraeli's  own  retrospective  glance  at  a 
book  which  even  those  readers  who  place  Tancred  or 
Coningshy  before  it,  must  allow  to  be  the  one  that  has 
exercised  the  greatest  influence  upon  the  national  life. 
In  its  way  it  is  as  autobiographical  a  book  as  Contarini 
Fleming;  we  get  at  the  very  heart  of  Disraeli  in  it  as 
a  politician.  Among  the  people  of  leisure  and  pleas- 
ure, he,  one  of  themselves,  is  the  pioneer  of  social  re- 
generation— that  new  birth  which  aimed  at  giving  to 
all  English-born  people  the  opportunity  to  live  de- 
cently. "Talk  of  heaven,  why,  you  are  not  fit  for 
earth,"  Thoreau  was  crying  out  in  New  England 
against  the  desecrators  of  the  mere  soil.  It  w^as  a 
human  as  well  as  a  physical  deformation  which  manu- 
facturing England  had  to  answer  for;  and  in  the  case 
of  Christians  surely  it  was  something  more.  God  is 
our  Father;  heaven  our  home;  the  dearest  Christian 
mysteries  are  associated  with  maternity,  w^ith  the  love 
of  husband  and  Avife,  the  love  proceeding  between 
father  and  son.  In  simple  truth,  the  ancient  Hebrews 
had  furnished  us  with  a  code  of  heaven  to  which  mod- 
ern England  had  lost  the  key.  It  did  not  know  these 
things;  and  not  without  influence  on  the  vitalizing  of 
domesticities,  human  and  divine,  was  that  Hebrew 
tradition  which  Disraeli  inherited,  and,  in  completing 
and  supplementing  it,  did  not  abandon.  Moses,  as  it 
seemed,  found  a  successor  in  this  modern  lawgiver. 

352 


"SYBIL  ' 

Others,  sick  at  heart  at  sight  of  the  oppression  of  the 
Toor,  prompted  them  to  rebel;  others  sought  iu  cou- 
fusion,  eveu  iu  social  peril,  an  escape  from  the  thral- 
dom of  a  life  of  inaction.  His  was  another  role — that 
of  teaching  the  Kich  to  make  restitution;  the  Poor  to 
be  powerful  in  patience, 

"The  people  are  not  strong" — this  was  his  social 
creed  in  the  year  1845,  the  year  when  Newman  was 
putting  kindred  thoughts  of  religious  concord  into 
practise  by  his  accession  to  the  Church  of  Kome — 
''the  people  never  can  be  strong.  Their  attempts  at 
self-vindication  will  end  only  in  suffering  and  con- 
fusion. It  is  civilization  that  has  effected,  and  is 
effecting,  this  change.  It  is  that  increased  knowledge 
of  themselves  that  teaches  the  educated  their  social 
duties.  There  is  a  dayspring  in  the  history  of  this 
nation  which  perhaps  those  only  who  are  on  the  moun- 
tain-top can  as  yet  recognize.  The  new  generation  of 
the  aristocracy  of  England  are  not  tyrants,  nor  op- 
pressors. Their  intelligence,  better  than  that,  their 
hearts,  are  open  to  the  responsibility  of  their  position. 
But  tlie  work  that  is  before  them  is  no  holiday  work; 
it  is  not  the  fever  of  superficial  impulse  that  can  re- 
move the  deep-fixed  barrier  of  centuries  of  ignorance 
and  crime.  Enough  that  their  sympathies  are 
awakened ;  time  and  thought  will  bring  the  rest.  They 
are  tlie  natural  leaders  of  the  people;  believe  me,  they 
are  the  only  ones."  Those  awakened  sympathies, 
awakened  not  a  moment  too  soon,  were  of  Disraeli's 
awakening.  Fie  roused  them  from  a  sleep  which  was 
nearly  that  of  death.  Dives  and  Lazarus  were  put 
24  353 


BEXJAMIX    DISRAELI 

upon  the  new  terms;  and  with  Dives  was  the  greater 
change;  so  that  now  scarce  a  great  family  in  the  land 
but  yields,  one  way  or  another,  a  worker  for  the  weak. 
Every  village  has  its  Lady  Bountiful;  and  White- 
chapel  itself  something  more  than  its  amazing 
"Whitechapel  Countess"  of  Mr.  Meredith's  fiction — a 
Duchess  who  is  daughter  to  Disraeli's  friend  Henry 
Hope,  and  who,  in  the  Commercial  Road,  fulfils  the 
ambition  born  in  those  glades  of  Deepdene  which  the 
dedication  page  of  Coningshij  commemorates. 

Between  that  literary  dedication  and  this  dedica- 
tion of  a  life,  one  delights  to  trace  common  affinities. 
For  it  was  Disraeli's  luck  that  the  men  and  women 
about  him,  or  their  descendants,  were  raised  up  to 
translate  his  words  and  wishes  into  deeds.  Xo  need 
to  name  the  Eowton  Houses,  which  show  how  one  man 
could  provide  uncostly  but  honorable  shelter  to  a  vast 
class  while  Governments  and  Councils  talked  of  the 
difficulties  of  doing  it.  It  was  Disraeli's  friend,  the 
Granby  of  his  early  letters,  who,  becoming  Duke  of 
Rutland,  was  the  earliest  of  great  landowners  to  give 
tenants  that  system  of  Allotments  which  was  to  be 
put  to  practical  test  again,  a  generation  later,  by  Dis- 
raeli's neighbors,  the  Caringtons.  There  was  Lord 
John  Manners  himself  at  hand,  "the  Philip  Sidney  of 
our  generation"  in  chivalrous  outlook  on  life;  one  who 
had  many  thoughts,  and  all  for  others;  the  promoter 
of  those  National  Holidays,  denied  to  him,  but  granted 
later  to  men  who  better  understood  the  commercial 
instincts  of  the  Islanders,  and  asked  in  the  name  of 
the  Bankers  the  boon  that  was  grudged  when  asked 

354 


"SYBIL" 

in  the  iiaiiu'  of  a  saint.  Tlio  passwords  of  the  Coiint- 
inji'  House  have  supplanted  those  of  the  CalluMli'al. 
Lord  .loliii,  too,  was  leader  of  that  friendly  combat 
between  gentle  and  simple  on  the  cricket  ground 
which  has  since  been  transformed  almost  into  a  Na- 
tional Institution.  The  Factory  Acts  were  carried  by 
such  men  as  these,  in  the  teeth  of  the  manufacturers 
of  the  Manchester  School:  were  carried  by  such  men 
as  Disraeli's  friend,  Bousfleld  Ferrand,  the  'Tory  John 
Bright''  as  he  was  called;  but  John  Bright  was  all 
against  the  dictation  of  the  State  to  masters  (he,  one 
of  them)  for  the  regulation  of  hours  of  work  and  ages 
of  workers,  or  for  the  sheathing  of  the  machinery  that 
made  mince-meat  of  their  limbs.  Let  us  not  suppose 
that  selfishness  drops  off  a  man  like  a  slough  when 
he  passes  the  portals  of  St,  Stephen's.  Disraeli,  as 
keen  to  create  a  Country  party  that  could  curb  the 
greed  of  towns  as  the  Manchester  School  was  to  get 
cheap  bread  (and  pay  lower  wages  in  consequence) 
even  at  the  ruin  of  the  land,,  went  to  Manchester,  and 
there  learned  the  lesson  that  may  be  familiar  enough 
now,  but  w^as  new  to  those  who  were  w^itnesses  to  the 
mushroom  rise  of  towns  sown  over  England  by  ma- 
chinery, the  steam-engine  most  of  all.  And  the  men- 
tion of  towns  reminds  us  that,  in  a  later  generation, 
Disraeli's  own  Lothair  set  the  example  of  civic  ser- 
vice, planning  his  town  of  Cardiff  on  a  system,  and 
wearing  the  mayoral  robes  and  the  chain  of  office 
(chased  under  his  own  eye) — the  first  of  the  "gentle- 
men'' who,  as  Disraeli  said,  had  no  claim  to  exist  ex- 
cept as  leaders  of  the  people. 

355 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Sybil;  or,  The  Tico  Natioiis,  was  published  in  1845, 
its  motto  a  sentence  from  Bishop  Latimer  in  reproach 
of  the  classes:  "The  Commonalty  murmured  and  said, 
'There  never  were  so  many  gentlemen  and  so  little 
gentleness.'  •'  It  was  dated  ''May  Day" — a  date  with 
a  reminiscence  in  it — and  from  Grosvenor  Gate,  with- 
in sight  of  all  that  is  brilliant  in  the  beginnings  of  a 
London  season.  It  made  its  appeal,  not  to  the  talking 
politician,  not  to  the  smart  reviewer;  it  was  not  in 
touch  at  all  with  the  trade  of  politics.  But  it  went, 
where  Mrs.  Browning's  Cry  of  the  Children  went,  to 
the  heart  of  the  amateur;  and  may  be  said  to  have 
sown  the  seed  which,  a  generation  later,  was  to  j-ield 
an  abundant  harvest  in  the  gentleness  of  the  pros- 
perous toward  the  dependent.  But  how  to  get  men 
to  hear  the  new  social  evangel?  Any  one  versed  in  the 
memoirs  of  the  time  remembers  what  deaf  ears  men 
had  for  all  thej  did  not  want  to  hear;  a  halter  or  a 
manacle  were  Park  Lane's  machinery  for  dealing 
with  popular  discontent  under  difficulties  facing  men 
from  the  growth  of  population,  the  rise  of  the  towns, 
the  great  inventions  and  movements  that  superseded 
manual  toil  and  feudal  conditions.  Disraeli,  if  any 
one,  couid  get  a  hearing  from  those  dull  ears;  he  knew 
the  knack;  this  blue-book  of  his  was  to  lie  on  every 
table  in  Park  Lane;  and  where  it  then  lay  it  lies  even 
to  this  hour. 

The  novel  opens  on  the  eve  of  the  Derby  in  the 
inaugural  Victorian  year  (1837),  and  the  scene  is  "a 
vast  and  golden  saloon  that,  in  its  splendor,  would 
not  have  disgraced  Versailles  in  the  days  of  the  Grand 

356 


"SYBIL" 

.Moiiairb.""  Tlie  club  men  are  betting  o\\  tbe  morrow's 
event  as  they  "consume  delicacies  for  wbU'b  tbt'v  bave 
no  appetiti'."  "I  ratlier  like  bad  wine/'  said  Mr. 
Mountcbesney;  "one  gets  so  bored  witli  good  wine." 
"I  never  go  anywliere,"  pleads  a  "melancboly  Cupid," 
wben  asked  if  be  bas  come  from  a  visit.  "Everytbing 
bores  me  so,"  be  adds  in  explanation.  To  an  invitation 
to  join  an  open-air  Derby  party — it  will  "do  bim  good," 
bis  proposing  bost  suggests — be  replies:  "Notbing 
could  do  me  good:  I  sbould  be  quite  content  if  any- 
tbing  could  do  me  barm."  Still  applicable  also  is  tbe 
more  formal  indictment  of  tbose  wbo,  possessing  all 
tilings,  bave  no  joy  in  any;  and,  needing  notbing,  need 
all.  "Tbey  go  about  from  place  to  place,  seeking  for 
some  new  pleasure.  Tbey  are  weary,  but  it  is  witb 
tbe  weariness  of  satiety."  Tbat  protest  of  Mr.  Brigbt 
against  tbese  Splendid  Paupers  in  life's  real  ricbes 
was  addressed  to — artisans.  It  was  intended  to  at- 
tack a  class  bebind  its  back,  not  to  admonisb  it  to  its 
face.  "Tbere  is  in  tbe  midst  of  us  a  general  popula- 
tion of  tbe  poor — I  make  tbe  acknowledgment  witb 
sbame  and  sorrow.  In  no  otber  country  can  be  found 
sucb — I  will  not  call  tbem  bomes,  I  will  not  call  tbem 
dwelling-])laces,  for  tbey  are  not  fit  for  buman  babita- 
tion;  but  hovels  in  which  whole  families  dwell  to- 
gethei',  ill  \]\o  coriier  of  a  room — such  places  exist 
under  1  he  eaves  of  our  palaces,  from  tlie  roofs  of  which 
the  rain  drijis  u])on  the  roofs  covering  a  population 
sunk  in  the  depths  (»f  physical  suffering."  That  is 
Cardinal  Manning's  version  of  Disraeli's  "The  dun- 
geon or  the  den  still  in  courtesy  called  home";  but  the 

357 


BEXJAMIX    DISRAELI 

Cardinal  addresses  only  a  congregation  in  a  Church, 
already  informed,  if  not  already  convinced.  The  polit- 
ical economist  got  hardly  a  better  hearing.    *'I  always 

vote  against  that  d d  'Intellect/  "  said  a  typical 

Belgravian,  when  John  Stuart  Mill  stood  for  West- 
minster. But  Disraeli's  mission  was  direct — to  teach 
the  whole  wealthy  class  its  duty  to  its  neighbor;  the 
duty  of  one  nation  to  another.  The  novel  was  a  means 
far  better  suited  to  that  end  than  the  philippic,  the 
sermon,  the  treatise.  Literary  triflers  might  call  the 
Disraelian  novel  a  tract.  Certainly;  that  was  its 
glory.  The  novel  with  a  purpose  was  a  Tract  for  the 
Time;  and  it  got  home.  The  jam  was  swallowed  and 
the  powder  with  it,  and  the  body  politic  knows  the 
difference,  though  the  cure  be  only  partial  yet. 

The  powder,  rather  than  the  preserve,  is  our  con- 
cern— as  it  is  still  England's.  The  village  of  Marney, 
delightfully  situated  in  spreading  dales,  flanked  by 
lofty  hills,  is  represented  to  us  by  Disraeli  as  a  beau- 
tiful illusion.  "Behind  that  laughing  landscape, 
penury  and  disease  fed  upon  the  vitals  of  a  miserable 
population."  At  the  great  house,  robbed  by  his  an- 
cestor from  the  monks,  and  therefore  from  the  Poor 
— (that  is  a  great  point  always  with  Disraeli,  and 
sometimes  was  a  sore  one  with  the  magnates  whom 
he  visited  in  their  alienated  Church  properties) — all 
was  gorgeous  as  it  was  dull.  Lord  Marney  glorified 
the  new  Poor  Law,  and  opined  that  Peel  would  stand 
by  his  class — Lord  Marney,  whose  face  was  the  index 
of  his  mind,  "cynical,  devoid  of  sentiment,  arrogant, 
literal,  hard,"  a  man  of  no  imagination  who  "had  ex- 

358 


"SYBIL" 

bausted  his  slight  native  feeling,  but  was  acute,  dis- 
putatious, and  firm  even  to  obstinacy";  a  disciple  of 
Helvetius,  and  one  ''who  always  gave  you  in  the  busi- 
ness of  life  the  idea  of  a  man  who  was  conscious  you" 
(especially,  perhaps,  if  "you"  were  an  alien  Disraeli) 
"were  trying  to  take  him  in,  and  rather  respected  you 
for  it,  but  the  working  of  whose  cold,  unkind  eye 
defied  you." 

Into  the  gallery  of  Disraeli's  peers  and  peeresses 
go  Lord  and  Lady  IMarney.  Sketches  they  are;  but, 
like  the  sketches  of  a  great  artist,  they  are  finished  at 
the  fleetest  touch.  "Completion"  would  be  super- 
fluity: a  wanton  waste.  The  "trick"  of  such  portrai- 
ture is  sometimes  said  to  be  easy;  yet  few  have  per- 
formed it  successfully,  and  none,  perhaps,  quite  so 
successfully  as  Disraeli.  Lord  Marney  as  a  landlord 
shall  have  the  first  sitting.  "I  wish,"  he  says  to  his 
brother  Egremont,  who  hints  at  the  horrible  poverty 
of  the  tenantry — "I  wish  the  people  were  as  well  off 
in  every  part  of  the  country  as  they  are  on  my  estate. 
They  get  here  their  eight  shillings  a  week,  always  at 
least  seven,  and  every  hand  is  at  this  moment  in  em- 
ploy, except  a  parcel  of  scoundrels  who  prefer  wood- 
stealing  and  poaching,  and  would,  if  you  gave  them 
double  the  wages.  The  rate  of  wages  is  nothing:  cer- 
tainty is  the  thing;  and  every  man  at  Marney  may  be 
sure  of  his  seven  shillings  a  week — for  at  least  nine 
months  of  the  year;  and,  for  the  other  three,  they  can 
go  to  the  House,  and  a  very  proper  place  for  them;  it 
is  heated  with  hot  air  and  has  every  comfort.  Even 
^Marney  Abbey  is  not  heated  with  hot  air.    I  have  often 

350 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

thought  of  it;  it  makes  me  mad  sometimes  to  think 
of  those  lazy,  pampered  menials  passing  their  lives 
with  their  backs  to  a  great  roaring  fire;  but  I  am 
afraid  of  the  flues."'  The  satire  is  essential;  it  has 
roots;  it  shoots  up  and  it  intertwines,  as  complex  as 
character  itself;  you  read  it  between  the  letters  rather 
than  between  the  lines. 

Disraeli  does  not  seek  to  persuade  his  readers  that 
a  bad  landlord  can  be  a  good  man.  Men  do  not  gather 
figs  of  thistles,  as  he  once  said,  when  somebody  com- 
plained of  the  f/aurherie  of  a  Knight  of  the  Thistle.  In 
his  relations  with  his  younger  brother  Egremont 
(whom  the  peer  introduces  to  an  heiress  as  his  own 
contribution  toward  the  election  bills  incurred  by  the 
commoner's  return  for  the  family  borough),  we  get  a 
study  of  the  selfishness  of  that  seniority  w^hich  counts 
for  so  much  in  a  country  favoring  primogeniture.  And 
when  you  come  closer  and  get  the  bad  landlord  before 
you  as  a  husband,  you  have  only  this  relief — that  the 
Wife  and  Martyr  (a  combination  to  w^hich  scant  recog- 
nition has  been  accorded  in  the  Church  of  so  many 
Virgins  and  Martyrs)  has  the  halo  true  men  ever  see 
her  wear  in  real  life;  and  this  must  be  her  consolation 
— that  Disraeli  saw  it  there  and  did  homage  accord- 
ingly: 

"Arabella  was  a  woman  of  abilities,  which  she  had 
cultivated.  She  had  excellent  sense,  and  possessed 
many  admirable  qualities;  she  was  far  from  being 
devoid  of  sensibility;  but  her  sweet  temper  shrank 
from  controversy,  and  Nature  had  not  endowed  her 
with  a   spirit  which  could  direct   and  control.     She 

300 


"SYBIL" 

yielded  without  a  «triiyj;le  to  tlie  arbitrary  will  and 
uureasonable  caprice  of  a  husband,  who  was  scarcely 
her  equal  in  intellect,  and  far  her  inferior  in  all  the 
genial  qualities  of  our  nature,  but  who  governed  her 
by  his  iron  selfishness.  Ladj^  Marney  absolutel}'  had 
no  will  of  her  own.  A  hard,  exact,  literal,  bustling, 
acute  being  environed  her  existence;  directed, 
planned,  settled  everything.  Her  life  was  a  series  of 
petty  sacrifices  and  balked  enjoyments.  If  her  car- 
riage were  at  the  door,  she  was  never  certain  that  she 
would  not  have  to  send  it  away;  if  she  had  asked  some 
friends  to  her  house,  the  chances  were  she  would  have 
to  put  them  off;  if  she  was  reading  a  novel,  Lord 
Marney  asked  her  to  copy  a  letter;  if  she  were  going 
to  the  opera,  she  found  that  Lord  Marney  had  got 
seats  for  her  and  some  friend  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  seemed  expecting  the  strongest  expressions  of  de- 
light and  gratitude  from  her  for  his  unasked  and  in- 
convenient kindness.  Lady  Marney  had  struggled 
against  this  tyranny  in  the  earlier  days  of  their  union. 
Innocent,  inexperienced  Lady  Marney!  As  if  it  were 
possible  for  a  wife  to  contend  against  a  selfish  hus- 
band, at  once  sharp-witted  and  blunt-hearted.  She 
had  appealed  to  him,  she  had  even  reproached  him; 
she  had  wept,  once  she  had  knelt.  But  Lord  blarney 
looked  upon  these  demonstrations  as  the  disordered 
sensibility  of  a  girl  unused  to  the  marriage  state,  and 
ignorant  of  the  wise  authority  of  husbands,  of  which 
he  deemed  himself  a  model.  And  so,  after  a  due 
course  of  initiation — Lady  ^Niamey  invisible  for  days, 
plunged  in  remorseful  reveries  in  the  mysteries  of  her 

301 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

boudoir,  and  her  lord  dining  at  his  club  and  going  to 
the  minor  theaters — the  countess  was  broken  in,  and 
became  the  perfect  wife  of  a  perfect  husband." 

During  a  London  season,  at  a  great  party  at  Delo- 
raine  House,  one  of  those  brilliant  generalities  that 
are  made  up  of  individual  dulnesses,  we  encounter 
Lord  and  Lady  Marney  again: 

''Where  is  Arabella?"  inquired  Lord  Marney  of  his 
mother.  "I  want  to  present  young  Huntingford  to 
her.  He  can  be  of  great  use  to  me,  but  he  bores  me 
so,  I  can  not  talk  to  him.  I  want  to  present  him  to 
Arabella." 

In  the  Blue  Drawing-Room  she  is  found.  "  ^Well,' 
says  her  husband,  in  concession  to  his  wife's  momen- 
tary reluctance  to  leave  agreeable  friends,  'I  will 
bring  Huntingford  here.  Mind  you  speak  to  him  a 
great  deal;  take  his  arm,  and  go  down  to  supper  with 
him  if  you  can.  He  is  a  very  nice  sensible  young  fel- 
low, and  you  will  like  him  very  much,  I  am  sure;  a 
little  shy  at  first,  but  he  only  wants  bringing  out' — 
dexterous  description  of  one  of  the  most  unlicked  and 
unlickable  cubs  that  ever  entered  society  with  forty 
thousand  a  year;  courted  by  all,  and  with  just  that 
degree  of  cunning  that  made  him  suspicious  of  every 
attention."  This  second  allusion  to  the  stand-off 
egotism  of  a  "noble"  seems  again  to  admit  us  to  a 
glimpse  of  early  Disraelian  autobiography. 

The  Earl  of  Marney,  who  hated  nothing  so  much 
as  a  poacher  except  a  lease,  extended  his  table  hos- 
pitality to  Slimsy,  the  vicar  of  the  parish,  a  model 
priest  because  he  left  everybody  alone.    Once,  indeed, 

362 


.M<iM.Mi;.\i    IN    riii;   (aii.DiiAi.i. 

Df.MgiK'd  l,y    li.    15dt,    1S82. 


I 


"SYBIL" 

iiuder  the  iiifluonce  of  Lady  Marney,  there  was  a 
threateued  ebullition  of  zeal — new  schools  and  tracts 
were  talked  of.  But  Lord  Marnej^  stopped  all  this. 
"No  priestcraft  at  Marney,"  said  this  gentle  proprietor 
of  abbey  lands. 

From  the  peer  we  pass  to  the  baronet — Sir  Vava- 
sour Firebrace,  w^ho  buttonholes  everybody  about  the 
«;rievances  of  an  order  he  is  delighted  later  to  desert 
for  a  barony:  an  Islander  without  guile — all  folly: 

"If  the  [new]  Sovereign  could  only  know  her  best 
friends/'  he  said  to  Egremont,  Lord  Marney's  younger 
brother  (a  Young  Englander  in  politics,  and  generally 
said  to  have  had  Disraeli  himself  for  his  prototype), 
"she  might  yet  rally  round  the  throne  a  body  of 
men ■■'  Lord  Marney  makes  a  move  from  the  din- 
ner-table to  interrupt  the  stale  theme;  for  a  bore  who 
is  a  bully  is  ever  intolerant  of  that  less  pestilent  person 
— a  bore  who  is  a  goose.  But  bores,  one  sort  or  an- 
other, are  not  so  easily  burked;  and  Egremont,  in  the 
drawing-room,  had  again  to  listen,  astonished,  to  the 
excited  recapitulation  of  the  possible  glories  of  the 
baronetcy,  while  the  Bloody  Hand  was  laid  retain- 
ingly  upon  his  arm.  "And  such  a  body,"  exclaimed 
Sir  Vavasour  with  animation.  "Picture  us  going 
down  in  procession  to  Westminster  to  hold  a  chapter. 
Five  or  six  hundred  baronets  in  dark-green  costume — 
the  appropriate  dress  of  rqiiifcs  aitrnti,  each,  not  only 
Willi  his  badge,  but  with  his  collar  of  S.S.,  belted  and 
scarfed;  his  star  glittering;  his  pennon  flying;  his  hat 
white,  with  a  plume  of  white  feathers;  of  course  the 
sword  and  tlie  gilt  spurs.     In  one  hand — the  thumb 

3G3 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ring  and  the  signet  not  forgotten — we  hold  our  coro- 
net of  tAvo  balls." 

The  satire  does  not  reallj^  border  on  burlesque,  it 
is  still  within  the  safe  precincts  of  human  fatuity, 
when  Sir  Vavasour  goes  on  to  describe  "the  body  evi- 
dently destined  to  save  this  country"  as  "blending  all 
sympathies — the  Crown,  of  which  they  are  the  pecu- 
liar champions;  the  nobles,  of  whom  they  are  the 
popular  branch;  the  people,  who  recognize  in  them 
their  natural  leaders.''  The  illusion  of  caste  is  por- 
trayed alike  in  Marney  and  in  Firebrace.  Men  go  to 
public  schools  to  get  rid  of  the  caste-consciousness; 
and  we  know  how  some  of  them  come  through  the 
purgation  with  no  trace  of  purification.  By  their  posi- 
tion, by  the  power  of  isolation  which  wealth  and 
station  give,  and  the  spoken  and  looked  politeness 
which  these  commonly  extort,  the  Marneys  and  Fire- 
braces  go  immune.  Disraeli  followed  them  up;  he 
opened  the  eyes  of  their  sons;  and  if  the  bores  of  to- 
day, still  as  plentiful  as  rabbits  in  Australia,  at  least 
begin  to  be  kept  somewhat  under,  the  remission  is  due 
in  great  measure  to  the  sport  Disraeli  made  of  them 
in  the  books  he  wrote — and  they  read.  This,  as  all 
will  admit,  is  no  slight  benefaction;  but  it  is  to  a  yet 
more  vital  one  that  we  turn  in  this  tale  of  Sybil,  the 
daughter  of  Gerard,  Chartist  and  artisan. 

How  fared  the  hamlet  gathered  round  Marney 
Abbey,  how  its  habitants?  "Marney  mainly  consist- 
ed of  a  variety  of  narrow  and  crowded  lanes  formed 
by  cottages  built  of  rubble  or  of  unhewn  stones  with- 
out cement,  looking  as  if  they  could  hardly  hold  to- 

364 


"SYBIL" 

getlier.  The  gaping  chinks  admitted  every  blast;  the 
leaning  chimneys  had  lost  half  their  original  height; 
the  rotten  rafters  were  evidently  misplaced;  while  in 
many  instances  the  thatch,  utterly  unfit  for  its  orig- 
inal purpose  of  giving  protection  from  the  weather, 
looked  more  like  the  top  of  a  dunghill  than  a  cottage. 
Before  the  doors  of  these  dwellings,  and  often  sur- 
rounding them,  ran  open  drains  full  of  animal  and 
vegetable  refuse,  decomposing  into  disease,  while  a 
concentrated  solution  of  every  species  of  dissolving 
filth  was  allowed  to  soak  through  and  thoroughly  im- 
pregnate the  walls  and  ground  adjoining.  These 
wretched  tenements^— continues  a  passage  which 
may,  with  other  passages  like  it,  be  taken  as  im- 
portant documents  bearing  on  the  pedigree  of  to-day's 
Sanitary  Inspectors  and  County  Councils — '^^seldom 
consisted  of  more  than  two  rooms,  in  one  of  which  the 
whole  family,  however  numerous,  were  obliged  to 
sleep,  without  distinction  of  age,  or  sex,  or  suffering. 
With  the  water  streaming  dowm  the  walls,  the  light 
distinguished  through  the  roof,  with  no  hearth  even 
in  winter,  the  virtuous  mother  in  the  sacred  pangs  of 
childbirth  ^gives  forth  another  victim  to  our  thought- 
less civilization,  surrounded  by  three  generations 
whose  inevitable  presence  is  more  painful  than  her 
sufferings  in  that  hour  of  travail:  while  the  father  of 
her  coming  cliild,  in  another  corner  of  the  sordid 
chamber,  lies  stricken  by  that  typhus  which  his  con- 
taminating dwelling  lias  breathed  into  his  veins,  and 
for  whose  next  prey  is  perhaps  destined  his  new-born 
child.     These  swarming  walls  had  neither  windows 

3G5 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

nor  doors  sufficient  to  keep  out  the  weather,  or  admit 
the  sun  or  supply  the  means  of  ventilation — the  hu- 
mid and  putrid  roof  of  thatch  exhaling  malaria  like 
all  other  decaying  vegetable  matter.  The  dwelling- 
rooms  were  neither  boarded  nor  paved;  and  whether 
it  were  that  some  were  situate  in  low  and  damp 
places,  occasionally  flooded  by  the  river,  and  usually 
much  below  the  level  of  the  road;  or  that  the  springs, 
as  was  often  the  case,  would  burst  through  the  mud 
floor;  the  ground  was  at  no  time  better  than  so  much 
clay,  while  sometimes  you  might  see  little  channels 
cut  from  the  center  under  the  doorways  to  carry  off 
the  water,  the  door  itself  removed  from  its  hingesf 
a  resting  place  for  infancy  in  its  deluged  home.  These 
~hovels"wefe~iirmany  Inst  a  u  c  es  not  provided  with  the 
commonest  conveniences  of  the  rudest  police;  con- 
tiguous to  every  door  might  be  observed  the  dungheap 
on  which  every  kind  of  filth  was  accumulated,  for  the 
purpose  of  being  disposed  of  for  manure,  so  that,  when 
the  poor  man  opened  his  narrow  habitation  in  the 
hope  of  refreshing  it  with  the  breeze  of  summer,  he 
was  met  with  a  mixture  of  gases  from  reeking  dung- 
hills." 

The  average  term  of  life  in  that  manufacturing  dis- 
trict was  seventeen;  more  than  half  the  children 
went  out  of  their  misery  before  they  were  five;  they 
came  unwelcome  and  they  went  unwept.  There  was 
little  to  distinguish  human  beings  from  brutes;  in 
many  respects  the  brutes  had  the  advantage.  "The 
domestic  principle  waxes  weaker  and  weaker  every 
year  in  England;  nor  can  we  wonder  at  it,  when  there 

366 


"SYBIL  " 

is  no  comfort  to  cheer  and  no  sentiment  to  hallow  the 
home."  The  Abbey  people  and  the  Town  people — 
these  are  (he  Two  Nations,  the  Itich  and  the  Poor.  Let 
us  fix  the  time — it  was  the  be<j;inning  of  that  Victorian 
era  which  spells  so  much  that  history  calls  glory. 
Memorable,  and  helping  us  to  remember  seasons,  is  a 
passage  in  this  very  book:  "In  a  palace  in  a  garden, 
not  in  a  haughty  keep,  proud  with  the  fame  but  dark 
with  the  violence  of  ages, — not  in  a  regal  pile,  bright 
with  splendor,  but  soiled  with  the  intrigues  of  courts 
and  factions;  in  a  palace  in  a  garden,  meet  scene  for 
youth  and  innocence  and  beauty,  came  the  voice  that 
told  the  maiden  she  must  ascend  the  throne." 

Disraeli  can  not  get  away  from  the  evolution  of 
things;  he  is  of  the  f)ast  and  of  the  future  as  well  as 
of  the  present,  an  "all-round  man";  no  provincial,  nor 
a  victim  to  that  twin  limitation  of  time  rather  than 
place — no  mere  opportunist  or  temporizer,  in  a  new 
and  needed  sense  of  those  words.  Looking  backward, 
then,  Disraeli  saw  the  Abbey,  and  associated  its  ruins 
with  the  ruined  cottages  of  the  peasants.  "The  eyes 
of  this  unhappy  race  might  have  been  raised  to  the 
solitary  spire  that  sprang  up  in  the  midst  of  them,  the 
bearer  of  present  consolation,  the  harbinger  of  future 
equality;  but  Holy  Church  at  Marney  had  forgotten 
her  sacred  mission."  Candles  were  no  longer  lighted 
on  its  altars;  instead,  as  Disraeli  saw,  hay-ricks  were 
set  ablaze  outside  by  incendiary  hands. 

"Over  a  space  of  not  less  than  ten  acres  might  still 
be  observed  the  fragments  of  the  great  Abbey:  these 
were,  toward  their  limit,  in  general  moss-grown  and 

307 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

moldering  memorials  that  told  where  once  rose  the 
offices  and  spread  the  terraced  gardens  of  the  old  pro- 
prietors; here  might  still  be  traced  the  dwelling  of 
the  Lord  Abbot;  and  there,  still  more  distinctly,  be- 
cause built  on  a  greater  scale  and  of  materials  still 
more  intended  for  perpetuity,  the  capacious  hospital, 
a  name  that  did  not  then  denote  the  dwelling  of  dis- 
ease, but  a  place  where  all  the  rights  of  hospitality 
were  practised;  where  the  traveler,  from  the  proud 
baron  to  the  lonely  pilgrim,  asked  the  shelter  and  the 
succor  that  never  was  denied,  and  at  whose  gate, 
called  the  Portal  of  the  Poor,  the  peasants  on  the  Ab- 
bey lands,  if  in  want,  might  appeal  each  morn  and 
night  for  raiment  and  for  food.  But  it  was  in  the 
center  of  the  tract  of  ruins,  occupying  a  space  of  not 
less  than  two  acres,  that,  with  a  strength  that  had 
defied  time,  with  a  beauty  that  had  at  last  turned 
away  the  wrath  of  man''  (I  think  nobody  could  say  that 
quite  so  well),  "still  rose  if  not  in  perfect,  yet  admira- 
ble, form  and  state,  one  of  the  noblest  achievements 
of  Christian  art — the  Abbey  church.  The  summer 
vault  was  now  its  only  roof,  and  all  that  remained  of 
its  gorgeous  windows  was  the  vastness  of  their  arched 
symmetry,  and  some  wreathed  relics  of  their  fantastic 
framework,  but  the  rest  was  uninjured.  From  the 
west  window,  looking  over  the  transept  chapel  of  the 
Virgin,  still  adorned  with  pillars  of  marble  and  ala- 
baster, the  eye  wandered  down  the  nave  to  the  great 
orient  light,  a  length  of  nearly  three  hundred  feet, 
through  a  gorgeous  avenue  of  unshaken  walls  and 
columns  that  clustered  to  the  skies.    On  each  side  of 

368 


"SYBIL" 

the  Lady  Chapel  rose  a  tower.  One  which  was  of 
great  antiquity,  being  of  that  style  which  is  commonly 
called  Norman,  short  and  very  thick  and  square,  did 
not  mount  much  above  the  height  of  the  western 
front;  but  the  other  tower  was  of  a  character  very 
different.  It  was  tall  and  light,  and  of  a  Gothic  style 
most  pure  and  graceful;  the  stone  of  which  it  was 
built,  of  a  bright  and  even  sparkling  color,  and  looking 
as  if  it  were  hewn  but  yesterday.  At  first,  its  tur- 
reted  crest  seemed  injured;  but  the  truth  is,  it  was 
unfinished;  the  workmen  were  busied  on  this  very 
tower  the  day  that  old  Baldwin  Greymount  came  as 
the  king's  commissioner  to  inquire  into  the  conduct 
of  this  religious  house.  The  Abbots  loved  to  memorize 
their  reigns  by  some  public  work,  which  should  add 
to  the  beauty  of  their  buildings  or  the  convenience  of 
their  subjects:  and  the  last  of  the  ecclesiastical  lords 
of  Marney,  a  man  of  fine  taste  and  a  skilful  architect, 
was  raising  this  new  belfry  for  his  brethren  w^hen  the 
stern  decree  arrived  that  the  bells  should  no  more 
sound.  And  the  hymn  was  no  more  to  be  chanted  in 
the  Lady  Chapel;  and  the  candles  were  no  more  to  be 
lit  on  the  high  altar;  and  the  gate  of  the  poor  was  to 
be  closed  forever;  and  the  wanderer  was  no  more  to 
find  a  home. 

'H'he  body  of  the  church  was  in  many  parts  over- 
grown with  brambles  and  in  all  covered  with  a  rank 
vegetation.  It  had  been  a  very  sultry  day,  and  the 
blaze  of  the  meridian  heat  still  inflamed  the  air;  the 
kine,  for  shelter  rather  than  for  sustenance,  had  wan- 
dered through  some  broken  arches,  and  were  lying  in 
25  369 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

the  shadow  of  the  nave.  This  desecration  of  a  spot, 
once  sacred,  still  beautiful  and  solemn,  jarred  on  the 
feelings  of  Egremont.  He  sighed  and  turning  away, 
followed  a  path  that  after  a  few  paces  led  him  into 
the  cloister  garden." 

It  is  here,  on  more  than  neutral  ground,  that, 
meetly  enough,  Egremont  the  young  legislator  en- 
counters Sybil  and  her  father,  Catholics  and  Chartists. 
Caste  ceases  upon  consecrated  ground.  That  is  the 
lesson  underlying  a  chapter  saying  otherw^ise  many 
a  true  thing  that  in  1845  was  also  a  new  thing  about 
the  monks.  "Their  history  has  been  written  by  their 
enemies,"  is  a  sentence  not  without  an  application  to 
Disraeli's  own.  When  Egremont,  speaking  by  rote, 
refers  to  the  fat  abbacies  which  fell  to  the  share  of 
younger  sons,  he  is  told  by  Gerard,  "Well,  if  we  must 
have  an  aristocracy,  I  would  sooner  that  its  younger 
branches  should  be  monks  and  nuns  than  Colonels 
without  regiments  or  housekeepers  of  Roj^al  palaces 
that  exist  only  in  name."  As  for  other  palaces,  "Try 
to  imagine,"  says  Gerard,  "the  effect  of  thirty  or  forty 
Chatsworths  in  this  county,  the  proprietors  of  which 
were  never  absent.  You  complain  enough  now  of  ab- 
sentees. The  monks  were  never  non-resident.  They 
expended  their  revenue  among  those  whose  labor  had 
produced  it.  These  holy  men  built  and  planted  for 
posterity;  their  churches  were  cathedrals;  their 
schools  colleges;  their  woods  and  waters,  their  farms 
and  gardens  were  laid  out  on  a  scale  and  in  a  spirit 
that  are  now  extinct;  they  made  the  country  beautiful, 
and  the  people  proud  of  their  country.     The  monas- 

370 


-SVIUL" 

terios  were  taken  by  storm.  Never  was  such  a 
pliiuder.  It  was  worse  than  the  Norman  Conquest; 
nor  has  England  ever  h)st  this  character  of  ravage. 
I  don't  know  whether  the  Union  Workhouses  will  re- 
niov<'  it.  After  an  experiment  of  three  centuries,  your 
jails  being  full,  and  your  treadmills  losing  some- 
thing of  their  virtue,  jou  have  given  us  a  substitute 
for  the  monasteries."'  It  is  the  doctrine  that  Cobbett 
also  was  proclaiming — an  adventure  to  deaf  ears. 
And  another  of  Sybil's  associates  spoke:  "As  for  com- 
munity, with  the  monasteries  expired  the  only  type 
that  we  ever  had  in  England  of  such  an  intercourse. 
There  is  no  community  in  England:  there  is  aggrega- 
tion, but  aggregation  under  circumstances  that  make 
it  rather  a  dissociating  than  a  uniting  principle." 

The  intelligent  sympathy  which  Disraeli,  here 
again  a  pioneer,  brought  to  bear  on  the  Old  Religion, 
and  even  on  some  of  its  modern  professors,  is  illus- 
trated in  other  books  beside  Si/hiL  May  Dacre,  the 
lieroiiK'  of  The  Youiuj  Duke,  is  one  such;  Contarini 
Fleming,  Disraeli's  (illcr  cf/o  in  so  much,  becomes  a  con- 
vert in  youth,  and  Nigel  Penruddock  in  Endymion  in 
maturer  age;  Eustace  de  Lyle,  a  pre-Newmanic  con- 
vert to  the  Koman  Catholic  religion  w'hile  he  was  still 
an  Eton  boy,  in  real  life  Ambrose  de  Lisle,  of  Garen- 
(lon,  is  given  as  the  best  type  of  squire;  and  ^Nfr.  Traf- 
ford  is  shown  as  a  model  manufacturer  who  housed 
his  people,  provided  them  with  recreation-grounds 
and  baths,  cared  and  spent  for  their  health  and  their 
goodness,  feeling  "that  betAveen  them  should  be  other 
ties  than  the  payment   and  the  receipt  of  wages." 

371 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Lothiiir,  with  its  less  grave  representatives  of  the  Old 
Keligion,  depicts  that  Society  Catholicism,  the  exist- 
ence of  which  only  ignorance  will  deny,  and  over  which 
Cardinal  Manning  wept  while  Disraeli,  with  a  rather 
like  intent,  laughed.  "The  human  spirit  reigns  over 
Christian  Society .  If  this  were  not  so,  London  could 
never  be  as  it  is  at  this  day.  And  how  to  deal  with  it? 
Certainly  not  with  the  pieties  of  our  Upper  Ten  Thou- 
sand nor  with  the  devotion  of  the  Faubourg  St.  Ger- 
main." These  words  of  the  Cardinal's  might  stand  on 
the  title-page  of  Lothair.  All  the  same  they  were  writ- 
ten by  a  Churchman  who  desired  that  the  Church 
should  unify  the  nation  and  the  nations.  The  Holy 
Ghost  was  to  him  the  Dove  bearing  a  social  olive 
branch — its  only  bearer;  and  it  is  worth  a  passing  note 
that,  of  the  persons  named  earlier  in  this  chapter  as 
putting  into  practise  Disraelian  ideas — the  Dowager 
Duchess  of  Newcastle,  Sir  Philip  Rose,  and  the  Mar- 
quis of  Bute,  no  less  than  Manning  himself — became 
enthusiastic  adherents  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church, 
which  is,  as  some  one  in  Syhil  says,  "to  be  respected 
as  the  only  Hebrew-Christian  Church  extant — all 
other  Churches  established  by  the  Hebrew  Apostles 
have  disappeared,  but  Rome  remains." 

And  one  hears  in  the  Sibylline  pages  not  only  the 
voice  that  was  to  be  Manning's,  but  at  times  that  also 
which  was  to  be  Buskin's.  "The  least  picturesque  of 
all  creations,"  a  railway  station,  is  pitted,  in  shame, 
against  a  monastery.  And  of  Mowbray,  the  seat  of 
the  Fitz  Warenes  (descended  ignobly,  like  so  many  of 
the  Peers  in  Disraeli's  Gallery — Fitz  Warene  himself 

372 


"SYBIL" 

from  a  St.  James's  Street  waiter);  ''Oli,  it  is  very 
graud,  but,  like  all  places  in  the  maiiufaeturiuj;-  dis- 
tricts, very  disagreeable.  You  never  have  a  clear  sky. 
Your  toilette-table  is  covered  with  blacks;  the  deer  in 
the  park  seem  as  if  the}'  had  bathed  in  a  lake  of  Indian 
ink;  and  as  for  the  sheep,  jou  expect  to  see  chimney- 
sweeps for  the  shepherds  not  duchesses  as  in  a  Wat- 
teau."  The  esthetic,  the  political,  the  religious  move- 
ments, were  under  different  captains,  were  even  un- 
aware of  their  nearness  to  each  other,  but  all,  seen 
at  dispassionate  distance,  converged  one  way. 

The  scene  at  the  Temple,  the  cheap  restaurant  in 
a  manufacturing  town  to  which  fatherless  and  un- 
christened  Devilsdust  takes  his  two  mill  ladies.  Miss 
Caroline  and  Miss  Harriet,  is  familiar.  Some  of  the 
old  salt  has  gone  from  the  narrative  now,  the  town 
"pleasures"  of  the  people  surprise  no  longer;  the  cos- 
termonger  has  his  theater  and  his  club  like  any  lord, 
the  same  theater — why  not? — and  (if  he  gets  enough 
money)  the  same  club.  But  there  is  other  grime  than 
that  on  the  lady's  toilette-table;  a  darkness  of  the  pit, 
that  Disraeli  set  out  to  disperse.  The  colliery  village 
occupies  his  pen  at  the  beginning  of  the  Third  Book  of 
Sybil: 

''It  was  the  twilight  hour;  the  hour  at  which  in 
southern  climes  the  peasant  kneels  before  the  sunset 
image  of  the  blessed  Hebrew  maiden;  when  caravans 
halt  in  their  long  course  over  vast  deserts,  and  the 
turbaned  traveler,  bending  in  the  sand,  pays  his 
homage  to  the  sacred  stone  and  the  sacred  city;  the 
hour,  not  less  holy,  that  announces  the  cessation  of 

373 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

English  toil,  and  sends  forth  the  miner  and  the  collier 
to  breathe  the  air  of  earth,  and  gaze  on  the  light  of 
heaven.  They  come  forth:  the  mine  delivers  its  gang 
and  the  pit  its  bondsmen;  the  forge  is  silent  and  the 
engine  is  still.  The  plain  is  covered  with  the  swarm- 
ing multitude:  bands  of  stalwart  men,  broad-chested 
and  muscular,  wet  with  toil,  and  black  as  the  children 
of  the  tropics;  troops  of  youth — alas  of  both  sexes — 
though  neither  their  raiment  nor  their  language  indi- 
cates the  difference;  all  are  clad  in  male  attire;  and 
oaths  that  men  might  shudder  at,  issue  from  lips  born 
to  breathe  words  of  sweetness.  Yet  these  are  to  be — 
some  are — the  mothers  of  England.  But  can  we  won- 
der at  the  hideous  coarseness  of  their  language  when 
we  remember  the  savage  rudeness  of  their  lives? 
Kaked  to  the  waist,  an  iron  chain  fastened  to  a  belt 
of  leather  runs  between  their  legs  clad  in  canvas 
trousers,  while  on  hands  and  feet  an  English  girl,  for 
twelve,  sometimes  for  sixteen  hours  a  day,  hauls  and 
hurries  tubs  of  coals  up  subterranean  roads,  dark,  pre- 
cipitous, and  plashy:  circumstances  that  seem  to  have 
escaped  the  notice  of  the  Society  for  the  Abolition  of 
Negro  Slavery.  Those  worthy  gentlemen  too  appear 
to  have  been  singularly  unconscious  of  the  sufferings 
of  the  little  Trappers,  which  was  remarkable,  as  many 
of  them  were  in  their  own  employ.  See  too  these 
emerge  from  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  Infants  of  four 
and  five  years  of  age,  many  of  them  girls,  pretty  and 
still  soft  and  timid;  entrusted  with  the  fulfilment  of 
most  responsible  duties,  and  the  nature  of  which  en- 
tails on  them  the  necessity  of  being  the  earliest  to 

374 


"SYBIL" 

enter  the  mine  and  the  latest  to  leave  it.  Their  labor 
indeed  is  not  severe,  for  that  would  be  impossible,  but 
it  is  passed  in  darkness  and  in  solitude.  They  endure 
that  punishment  Avhieh  philosophical  philanthropy 
has  invented  for  the  direst  criminals,  and  which  those 
iriminals  deem  more  terrible  than  the  death  for  which 
it  is  substituted.  Uour  after  hour  elapses,  and  all 
that  reminds  the  infant  Trappers  of  the  world  they 
have  quitted  and  that  which  they  have  joined,  is  the 
passage  of  the  coal-wagons  for  which  they  open  the 
air-doors  of  the  galleries,  and  on  keeping  which  doors 
constantly  closed,  except  at  this  moment  of  passage, 
the  safety  of  the  mine  and  the  lives  of  the  persons  em- 
ployed in  it  entirely  depend.  Sir  Joshua,  a  man  of 
genius  and  a  courtly  artist,  struck  by  the  seraphic 
countenance  of  Lady  Alice  Gordon,  when  a  child  of 
very  tender  j-ears,  painted  the  celestial  visage  in  va- 
rious attitudes  on  the  same  canvas,  and  styled  the 
group  of  heavenly  faces — guardian  angels.'' 

Country  cottages  have  been  described;  the  dwell- 
ers of  the  towns  were  not  less  basely  housed.  Wod- 
gate  has  the  appearance  of  "a  vast  squalid  suburb." 
*'It  is  rare  to  meet  with  a  young  person  who  knows 
his  own  age,  rarer  to  find  the  boy  who  has  seen  a  book 
or  the  girl  who  has  seen  a  flower."  Asked  the  name 
of  their  religion,  the  people  reply  by  a  stare  and  a 
laugh;  and  they  live  in  "long  lines  of  little  dingy  tene- 
ments, with  infants  lying  about  the  road."  That  civic 
life,  which  Disraeli  the  novelist  now  mourned  over  in 
absence,  and  which  Disraeli  the  politician  was  to  do 
so  much  to  foster,  was  not  yet  brought  to  birth: 

375 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"There  were  no  public  buildings  of  any  sort;  no 
churches,  chapels,  town-hall,  institute,  theater;  and 
the  principal  streets  in  the  heart  of  the  town  in  which 
were  situate  the  coarse  and  grimy  shops,  though 
formed  by  houses  of  a  greater  elevation  than  the  pre- 
ceding, were  equally  narrow  and  if  possible  more 
dirty.  At  every  fourth  or  fifth  house,  alleys  seldom 
above  a  yard  wide,  and  streaming  with  filth,  opened 
out  of  the  street.  These  were  crowded  with  dwellings 
of  various  size,  while  from  the  principal  court  often 
branched  out  a  number  of  smaller  alleys  or  rather 
narrow  passages,  than  which  nothing  can  be  conceived 
more  close  and  squalid  and  obscure.  Here  during  the 
days  of  business,  the  sound  of  the  hammer  and  file 
never  ceased,  amid  gutters  of  abomination  and  piles 
of  foulness  and  stagnant  pools  of  filth;  reservoirs  of 
leprosy  and  plague,  whose  exhalations  were  sufficient 
to  taint  the  atmosphere  of  the  whole  kingdom  and 
fill  the  country  with  fever  and  pestilence.  A  lank  and 
haggard  youth,  ricketj^  and  smoke-dried,  and  black 
with  his  craft,  was  sitting  on  the  threshold  of  a  mis- 
erable hovel  and  working  at  the  file.  Before  him 
stood  a  stunted  and  meager  girl,  with  a  back  like  a 
grasshopper;  a  deformity  occasioned  by  the  displace- 
ment of  the  blade-bone,  and  prevalent  among  the  girls 
of  AYodgate  from  the  cramping  posture  of  their  usual 
toil." 

The  story  of  the  Truck  system  is  told — the  pay- 
ment of  wages  in  fourth-rate  food,  under  conditions  of 
fatigue,  and  at  the  hands  of  bestial  bullies.  To  an  on- 
looker like  Disraeli,  with  the  Sanitary  laws  of  Moses 

376 


ilr 


llil.     AluMMliN  I      IN     l'Ai;i.lAMi;.\  1      ,-m.^IARE 


"SYBIL  " 

ill  liis  brain,  the  savagery  of  the  Islanders  must  have 
seemed  complete;  an  onlooker,  impartial,  to  some  ex- 
tent iiiii)assive,  even  here.  The  alien  in  him  turned  an 
imi)artial  eye  on  rich  and  poor  alike;  and  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  attitude  explains  to  us  why  all  great 
artists  have  to  be  aliens  in  one  way  or  another.  It 
was  not  worth  Disraeli's  while  to  be  a  partizau;  he 
presents  to  us  debauched  Simon  Halton  as  well  as 
selfish  Lord  Marney;  shows  the  same  jealousies  among 
the  National  Delegates  as  those  that  eat  out  the 
hearts  of  Cabinet  Ministers.  Chartists  conspire  in  the 
inn  parlor  while  an  aristocratic  cabal  meets  in  a  St. 
James's  Square  drawing-room  to  wrest  by  safe  and 
calculated  intrigue  from  ministers  the  promotion 
which  was  the  price  of  their  support.  The  book  be- 
gins, proceeds,  and  closes  without  an  illusion;  and  is 
yet  a  book  big  with  purpose.  Above  all,  in  SijhU,  does 
Disraeli  make  war  upon  the  claims  of  aristocrats  to 
rule  by  right  of  their  station.  Almost  to  a  man,  they 
are  fools  or  knaves;  nothing  is  left  them  in  their 
nakedness  when  even  their  pedigrees  crumble  beneath 
his  inquisition,  the  fig-leaves  fall  from  the  family-tree. 
It  was,  perhaps,  a  final  sop  to  the  libraries  to  let  Sybil, 
the  daughter  of  the  people,  end  as  a  baroness  in  her 
own  right:  the  ancient  authors  of  the  Book  of  Job 
made  a  similar  concession— Job  gets  his  prosperity 
again.  Again,  the  incidents  of  the  attack  of  Mowbray 
Castle  by  the  mob  are  not  perhaps  overdrawn  in  them- 
selves; but  as  a  means  to  an  end,  that  end  being  the 
recovery  of  papers  that  will  prove  Sybil's  nobility  of 
birth,  they  tend  to  the  extravagant.     The  killing  of 

377 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Lord  Marney  so  that  Egremont  may  succeed  him,  and 
the  killing  of  Gerard  to  rid  Egremont,  marrying 
Gerard's  daughter  Sybil,  of  a  difficult  father-in-law — 
these  are  felt  to  be  flaws  in  the  novelist's  work  of  art; 
death  is  too  easy  a  solution  of  his  difficulties  to  be  one 
worthy  of  his  closing  with  it.  Indeed  the  book  ends 
abruptly;  and  it  ends,  from  the  story  point  of  view, 
exactly  where  one  wants  it  to  go  on.  A  picture  of 
Sybil  (one  hopes  Egremont  persuaded  her  to  spell  her 
name  Sibyl)  as  mistress  of  Marney  and  lover  of  the 
poor  would  not  have  been  beyond  Disraeli's  powers, 
with  his  intimate  understanding  of  cottage  and  hall. 
Elsewhere  in  literature,  though  not  in  life,  w^e  look  in 
vain  for  a  modern  Lady  of  Burleigh  who,  milkmaid 
reared,  does  not  "droop"  under  "the  burden  of  an  hon- 
or" acquired  by  marriage.  Disraeli  had  instincts  more 
humane;  he  did  not  look  at  life — at  the  Hall — from 
the  confines  of  a  village  rectory  or  the  enclosure  of  a 
petty  squire's  walls. 

The  question  remains — was  all  the  emotion  of  this 
book,  the  most  Radical  that  even  Disraeli  ever  wrote, 
to  evaporate  in  the  Senate,  or  was  he  to  put  upon  the 
Statute  Book,  or  to  help  others  to  put  there,  that 
charter  of  liberty  which  grew  under  his  pen  at  Gros- 
venor  Gate?  He,  indeed,  expected  us,  when  we  set 
down  his  book,  to  put  him  to  the  test.  In  a  final 
passage,  he  alludes  to  his  own  Parliamentary  posi- 
tion; a  passage  which  those  who  have  here  followed 
his  earliest  speeches  will  best  understand.  Thirteen 
years  have  gone;  but  the  hustings  sentiments  of  1832 
are  reproduced  and  expanded  in  the  novel  of  1845: 

378 


"  SYBIL" 

"And  thus  1  fouihide  the  last  page  of  a  work, 
which  though  its  form  be  light  and  unpretending, 
would  yet  aspire  to  suggest  to  its  readers  some  con- 
siderations of  a  very  opposite  character.  A  year  ago, 
I  presumed  to  offer  to  the  public  some  volumes  that 
aimed  to  call  their  attention  to  the  state  of  our  polit- 
ical parties;  their  origin,  their  history,  their  present 
position.  In  an  age  of  political  infidelitj^,  of  mean 
passions  and  petty  thoughts,  I  Avould  have  impressed 
upon  the  rising  race  not  to  despair,  but  to  seek  in  a 
right  understanding  of  the  history  of  their  country 
and  in  the  energies  of  heroic  youth — the  elements  of 
national  welfare.  The  present  work  advances  another 
step  in  the  same  emprise.  From  the  state  of  Parties 
it  now  would  draw  public  thought  to  the  state  of  the 
People  whom  those  parties  for  two  centuries  have 
governed.  The  comprehension  and  the  cure  of  this 
greater  theme  depend  upon  the  same  agencies  as  the 
first:  it  is  the  past  alone  that  can  explain  the  present, 
and  it  is  youth  that  alone  can  mold  the  remedial  fu- 
tnrc.  The  written  history  of  our  country  for  the  last 
ten  reigns  has  been  a  mere  phantasma;  given  to  the 
origin  and  consequence  of  public  transactions  a  char- 
acter and  color  in  every  respect  dissimilar  with  their 
natural  form  and  hue.  In  this  mighty  mystery  all 
thoughts  and  things  have  assumed  an  aspect  and  title 
contrary  to  their  real  quality  and  style:  Oligarchy  has 
been  called  Liberty;  an  exclusive  Priesthood  has  been 
christened  a  National  rimrch;  Sovereignty  has  been 
the  title  of  something  that  has  had  no  dominion,  while 
absolute  power  has  been  wielded  by  those  who  profess 

379 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

themselves  the  servants  of  the  people.  In  the  selfish 
strife  of  factions  two  great  existences  have  been 
blotted  out  of  the  history  of  England — the  Monarch 
and  the  Multitude;  as  the  power  of  the  Crown  has 
diminished,  the  privileges  of  the  people  have  disap- 
peared; till  at  length  the  scepter  has  become  a  pag- 
eant, and  its  subject  has  degenerated  again  into  a 
serf.  It  is  nearly  fourteen  years  ago,  in  the  popular 
frenzy  of  a  mean  and  selfish  revolution  w' hich  neither 
emancipated  the  Crown  nor  the  People,  that  I  first 
took  the  occasion  to  intimate  and  then  to  develop  to 
the  first  assembly  of  my  countrymen  that  I  ever  had 
the  honor  to  address,  these  convictions.  They  have 
been  misunderstood  as  is  ever  for  a  season  the  fate  of 
Truth,  and  they  have  obtained  for  their  promulgator 
much  misrepresentation,  as  must  ever  be  the  lot  of 
those  who  will  not  follow  the  beaten  track  of  a  falla- 
cious custom.  But  Time,  that  brings  all  things,  has 
brought  also  to  the  mind  of  England  some  suspicion 
that  the  idols  they  have  so  long  worshiped  and  the 
oracles  that  have  so  long  deluded  them  are  not  the 
true  ones.  There  is  a  whisper  rising  in  this  country 
that  Loyalty  is  not  a  phrase,  Faith  not  a  delusion, 
and  Popular  Liberty  something  more  diffusive  and 
substantial  than  the  profane  exercise  of  the  sacred 
rights  of  sovereignty  by  political  classes.  That  we 
may  live  to  see  England  once  more  possess  a  free  Mon- 
archy and  a  privileged  and  prosperous  People,  is  my 
prayer;  that  these  great  consequences  can  only  be 
brought  about  by  the  energy  and  devotion  of  our 
Youth  is  my  persuasion.    We  live  in  an  age  when  to 

3S0 


-ONE   OF   MY    OLDEST    FRIENDS" 

be  young  and  to  bo  indifferent  can  be  no  longer  syn- 
onymons.  We  must  prepare  for  the  coming  hour. 
The  claims  of  the  Future  are  represented  by  suffering 
millions;  and  the  Youth  of  a  Nation  are  the  trustees 
of  Posterity." 

Sjfhil ;  or,  The  Tiro  Xations,  was  published  by  Col- 
burn  in  1845;  has  gone  through  many  editions  in  Eng- 
land and  America;  was  translated  into  French  in 
1870;  and  bears  the  well-known  dedication: 

"I  would  inscribe  these  volumes  to  one  whose 
noble  spirit  and  gentle  nature  ever  prompt  her  to 
sympathize  with  the  suffering;  to  one  whose  sweet 
voice  has  often  encouraged,  and  whose  taste  and 
judgment  have  ever  guided,  their  pages;  the  most 
severe  of  critics,  but — a  perfect  Wife!'' 

Sir  George  Sinclair  was  Edinburgh-born  in  1790, 
and  at  Harrow  was  intimate  with  Byron — an  associa- 
"Oneofm  ^^^^^  which  is  presumably  relied  upon  by 
Oldest  his  son,  Sir  Tollemache  Sinclair,  in  pro- 

posing [1903]  to  place  tablets  to  Byron's 
memory  at  Hucknall  Torkard,  though  the  poet's  own 
descendants  are  perfectly  able,  and  perfectly  quali- 
fied, to  be  the  guardians  of  his  tomb.  After  leaving 
Harrow,  Sir  George  went  as  a  student  to  Gottingen. 
He  was  elected  M.P.  for  Caithness  before  he  attained 
his  majority,  and  he  sat  for  about  thirty  years,  the 
last  three  or  four  of  which  were  those  of  Disraeli's 
first  membership.  He  married,  in  1810,  Camilla, 
daughter  of  Sir  William  Manners;  in  1851  he  joined 
the  Free  Church  of  Scotland;  and  he  died  in  18G8,  hav- 

381 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

ing,  a  year  earlier,  dissociated  himself  from  the  Tory 
party  in  consequence  of  their  Reform  Bill — "the  Con- 
servative surrender"  to  democracy,  as  the  Quarterly 
Revieiv  called  it,  for  once  in  alliance  with  the  Whig 
Edinburgh  Review. 

To  aS^iV  George  Sinclair,  Bart. 

"Grosvenor  Gate, 
''March  Vith,  1846. 

"My  dear  Sir  George:  I  have  delayed  answering 
3^our  very  welcome  letter,  in  the  hope  that  I  might 
find  a  quiet  half-hour  to  communicate  with  one  for 
whom  I  have  so  much  regard  and  respect  as  yourself. 
But  that  seems  impossible,  and  I  can  not  allow  an- 
other day  to  pass  without  expressing  how  much 
touched  I  was  by  hearing  from  you,  and  how  much  I 
sympathize  with  those  sorrows  which  have  prevented 
us  all  of  late  enjoying  your  society. 

"Here  we  are  involved  in  a  struggle  of  ceaseless 
excitement  and  energy.  Deserted  by  our  leaders,  even 
by  the  subalterns  of  the  camp,  we  have  been  obliged 
to  organize  ourselves  and  to  choose  chieftains  from 
the  rank  and  file:  but  the  inspiration  of  a  good  cause 
and  a  great  occasion  has  in  some  degree  compensated 
for  our  deficiencies,  and  we  work  with  enthusiasm. 
Would  you  were  among  us  to  aid  and  counsel,  and 
that  great  spirit  too,  departed  from  this  world  as  well 
as  the  senate,  on  whose  memory  I  often  dwell  with 
respect  and  fondness. 

"I  thank  you  for  your  hints,  of  which  I  shall  avail 
myself,  and  shall  always  be  proud  and  happy  to 
cherish  your  friendship. 

"Yours,  dear  Sir  George,  very  sincerely, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

382 


*'ONp:  of  my  oldest  friends  *' 


To  A^'/r  (iCDn/v  Sinclair,  Hart. 

"Grosvexor  Gatk, 
''November  25th,  1«47. 

"My  dear  Sir  (Jeorge:  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a 
eoiTespoudent,  as  1  have  often  told  you,  I  am  over- 
worked, otherwise  1  should  be  glad  to  conimiinieate 
with  3'ou,  of  all  men,  in  the  spirit,  and  bathe  the  mem- 
ory sometimes  in  those  delicious  passages  of  ancient 
song  which  your  unrivaled  scholarship  so  beautifully 
commands.  My  dear  friend  John  Manners  writes  to 
me  every  week,  now  he  is  shut  out  from  Parliament, 
and  expects  no  return,  but  he  gives  me  his  impressions 
and  counsels,  often  the  clearer  from  his  absence  from 
our  turbulent  and  excited  scene.  I  can  not  venture 
to  ask  such  favors  from  you,  though  I  should  know 
how  to  appreciate  the  suggestive  wisdom  of  a  classic 
sage. 

''On  Tuesday  will  commence  one  of  the  most 
important  debates  that  ever  took  place  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  I  shall  reserve  myself,  I  apprehend,  to 
the  end.  It  will  last  several  nights.  There  is  a  pas- 
sage about  usury,  which  haunts  my  memory,  and  which 
I  fancied  was  in  Juvenal,  but  I  could  not  light  upon 
it  as  I  threw  my  eye  over  the  pages  j-esterday.  Not- 
withstanding our  utilitarian  senate,  I  wish  that,  if 
possible,  the  noble  I\oman  spirit  should  sometimes  be 
felt  in  the  House  of  Commons,  expressed  in  its  own 
magnificent  tongue.  T  have  of  late  years  ventured 
sometimes  on  this,  not  without  success,  and  in  onc^ 
instance  I  remember  a  passage  which  I  owed  to  your 
correspondence.  It  was  apposite,  when  in  reference 
to  Sir  James  Graham's  avowed  oblivion  of  the  past 
I  told  him — 

"Ut  di  neiuineriint,  uieminit  fides. 

383 


BEXJAMIX    DISRAELI 

"Let  me  at  least  hear  that  you  are  better,  and  al- 
ways believe  me,  with  the  most  unaffected  regard, 
your  friend  and  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

Once,  when  Mrs.  Disraeli  accompanied  her  hus- 
band to  a  photographer  who  had  asked  a  sitting 
from  him  and  who  gave  him  a  pedestal  to  rest  upon, 
she  leapt  from  her  ambush,  and  pushed  away  the 
pedestal,  exclaiming:  ''Dizzy  has  never  had  any 
one  but  me  to  lean  upon  in  life,  and  he  shall  not  be 
shown  with  a  prop  now."  In  this  letter  to  Sir  George 
Sinclair  we  have  a  glimpse  of  the  caged  politician 
putting  out  his  trunk,  as  the  elephant  might  at  the 
zoo,  for  a  cracker.  The  sincerity  of  the  allusion  to 
Lord  John  Manners's  letters  will  be  accepted  by  those 
whose  experience  of  Lord  John  as  a  correspondent 
has  enabled  them  to  appreciate  his  sane  outlook  and 
his  very  direct  powers  of  expression.  Later  Sir 
George  Sinclair  refused  his  name  to  the  Edinburgh 
committee  of  welcome  to  his  old  correspondent,  whom, 
as  these  early  letters  show,  he  had  primed  with  quo- 
tations to  baffle  and  demolish  his  opponents.  With 
the  letters  of  twenty  years  earlier  before  us,  we  read 
with  double  interest  Disraeli's  allusions  to  the  ab- 
sentee in  1867: 

"Pardon,"  he  said,  "some  feeling  on  my  part  when 
I  remember  that  it  is  in  consequence  of  my  conduct, 
in  consequence  of  our  unprincipled  withdrawal  of  se- 
curities, and  the  betrayal  of  our  supporters,  who  in- 
sisted on  being  betrayed,  that  I  miss  to-day  the  pres- 
ence of  one  of  my  oldest  and  most  valued  friends.     I 

384 


"ONE    OF    MV    OLDEST    FRIENDS" 

should  have  liked  to  be  wclcoinod  by  his  cordial  heart 
and  witli  the  i'i])t'  scholarship  which  uo  one  appreci- 
ated more  than  myself.  lie  has  communicated  the 
withdrawal  of  his  confidence  in  a  letter  which,  strange 
to  say,  has  not  a  (inotation.  No  one  could  have  fur- 
nished a  happier  one.  I  can  picture  him  to  myself  at 
this  moment  in  the  castellated  shades  of  Thurso  with 
the  h'dinl)iir(i}t  Review  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other 
*the  Conservative  surrender.'  .  .  .  I  see  many 
gentlemen  who  have  doubtless  been  as  magistrates, 
like  myself,  inspectors  of  peculiar  asylums.  You 
meet  there  some  cases  which  I  have 'always  thought 
at  the  same  time  the  most  absurd  and  the  most  dis- 
tressing. It  is  when  the  inmate  believes  that  all  the 
world  is  mad  and  that  he  himself  is  sane.  But,  to  pass 
from  these  gloomy  images,  really  these  Edinhurgh  and 
Quarierhj  Revicicerf;  no  one  more  admires  than  myself. 
But  I  admire  them  as  I  do  first-rate  post-houses  which, 
in  old  days,  to  use  a  Manchester  phrase,  'carried  on 
a  roaring  trade.'  Then  there  comes  some  revolution 
of  progress.  Things  are  altered.  Boots  of  the  Blue 
Bell  and  the  chambermaid  of  the  Red  Lion  embrace, 
and  they  are  quite  in  accord  in  this — in  denouncing 
the  infamy  of  railroads." 

To  »S'/r  (Iconic  ^'uicJair,  Bart. 
[Just  afte}-  the  expulsion  of  Lours  Philijipe  from  Paris.} 

"My  dk.vr  Sir  George:    Thanks,  many,  for  your 

excellent  hints  of  this  morning.    Every  day  for  these 

two  months  I  have  been  wishing  to  find  a  moment  of 

repose  to  write  to  you — but   I  have  been  entirely  en- 

^^  385 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

grossed  with  affairs,  j^ublic  and  private — and  now 
after  all,  I  write  to  you  in  the  midst  of  a  revolution. 
The  catastrophe  of  Paris  is  so  vast,  so  sudden,  so  inex- 
plicable, so  astounding,  that  I  have  not  yet  recovered 
from  the  intelligence  of  yesterday  afternoon.  It  must 
have  an  effect  on  this  country,  and  on  all  Europe  pre- 
pared to  explode.  Here  the  tone  of  men  is  changed 
in  an  instant,  and  our  friend  Joseph  Hume  made  a 
speech  last  night  under  the  inspiration  of  the  Jacobin- 
ical triumph — quite  himself  again! 

"As  for  votes  of  non-confidence,  had  one  been  pro- 
posed w^hen  you  suggested  it,  I  calculated  that  the 
Government  might  have  had  two  hundred  majority: 
all  the  Peelites  and  time-servers  being  then  prepared 
to  support  them.  xVffairs  are  now  somewhat  changed, 
and  it  is  on  the  cards  that  a  few  days  may  produce 
some  result.  I  am  heartily  glad  I  denounced  the 
Jacobin  movement  of  Manchester  ^  before  this  last 
French  revolution.  I  am  obliged  and  gratified  by  all 
your  letters,  and  enclose  some  documents  as  you 
wished. 

"Yours  ever, 

"D." 


"Grosvenor  Gatk, 
"Half-past  one. 

"My  dear  Wood:    My  not  seeing  you  this  morning 
has  terribly  deranged  my  plans,  as  there  is  a  Cabinet 

Government       at  twO  o'clock. 

"Ghosts."  "I  gend  this  by  messenger  to  beg  that 

you   will    come    on   immediately   to   D.S.    [Downing 
Street],  and  I  will  come  out  of  the  Cabinet  to  see  you, 

'  The  reference  is  to  a  speech  made  by  Bright  at  IManchester  containing 
the  words:  "Manchester  ought  to  unfurl  the  banner  of  Liberty,  Fraternity, 
and  Equality." 

386 


GOVERNMENT    "GHOSTS" 

as  there  is  a  point,  among  man}'  others,  on  which  I 

wish  to  speak  with  you,  withbut  a  moment's  loss  of 

time. 

"Yours  sincerely, 

"D." 

The  letter  is  undated;  and  the  Cabinet  and  the 
Wood  that  was  to  fill  its  crevices  at  a  moment's  notice 
are  now  difficult  to  identify.  None  the  less,  like  the 
letters  to  Sir  George  Sinclair,  it  illustrates  the  bustle, 
the  sudden  search  for  detail,  the  dry  diligence,  that 
frequently  became  the  portion  of  a  working  debater, 
and  still  more  of  an  imperturbable  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer.  Downing  Street  is  haunted — in  every 
cui^board  is  the  skeleton  of  a  speech,  and  behind  each 
chair  a  "ghost." 

Disraeli  could  look  back  on  the  old  "coaching" 
days  in  two  senses:  the  days  when  the  early  Eailway 
Bills  demanded  on  the  part  of  the  legislator  a  knowl- 
edge only  to  be  had  from  experts  b^'  word  of  mouth — 
the  treatises  had  not  had  time  to  be  written.  Mr. 
George  Somes  Layard  tells  the  story  of  "A  Scrap  of 
Paper,"  not  without  its  own  touch  of  drama — a  story 
in  which  quite  another  Wood  appears.  In  1847,  dur- 
ing the  debate  on  the  Suspension  of  Public  Works 
(Ireland)  Bill,  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  Sir 
Charles  Wood  (afterward  Lord  Halifax),  quoted  some 
figures,  on  the  faith  of  an  anonymous  informant, 
showing  that  only  a  quarter  of  the  money  spent  on 
constructing  a  line  went  into  the  pockets  of  the  labor- 
ers. "And  what  lias  the  honorable  member  for 
Shrewsbury   (Mr.    Disraeli)    dared   to    do?      He    has 

387 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

actually  risen  in  his  place  and  said  that  he  has  seen 
or  communicated  with  the  gentleman  from  whom 
these  figures  were  received,  and  had  heard  from  him 
that  he  (Sir  Charles  Wood)  had  entirely  misconceived 
them.  What  will  the  House*  think  of  this  statement 
of  the  honorable  member  in  view  of  the  following 
message  from  my  anonymous  informant:  'I  certainly 
never  called  upon  Mr.  Disraeli  or  communicated  with 
him  in  my  life'?" 

When  the  member  for  Shrewsbury  arose,  he  was 
narrowly  watched  by  the  Commons,  who  plainly  ap- 
peared to  think  that  something  Machiavellian  was  in 
course  of  unravelment.  Mr.  Disraeli  corrected  the 
Chancellor.  He  had  not  stated  that  he  had  been  in 
communication  with  the  anonymous  informant  from 
whom  the  figures  had  been  obtained  by  the  Minister, 
but  that  he  had  been  in  communication  with  a  gentle- 
man of  great  experience  and  peculiar  knowledge  on 
scientific  subjects  who  supposed,  from  the  speech  of 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  that  he  had  been  the 
person  it  contained  allusions  to,  since  he  had  been  in 
correspondence  with  the  Government.  "All  this  con- 
fusion," Mr.  Disraeli  went  on  to  say,  "arises  from 
using  anonymous  communications  in  this  House.  But 
when  we  know  the  number  of  persons  who  communi- 
cate directly  or  indirectly  with  the  Government,  not, 
perhaps,  with  persons  in  as  exalted  a  position  as  the 
right  honorable  gentleman,  but  with  persons  in  a  very 
high  position,  I  can  readily  understand  twenty  or 
thirty  or  even  fifty  of  these  anonymous  individuals 
going  about  London  and  believing  that  they  are  the 

3S8 


GOVERNMENT   "GHOSTS  " 

authorities  whose  statements  the  Minister  has  re- 
peated to  the  assembled  Parliament."'  Mr.  Disraeli 
then  offered  to  give  his  informant's  name  if  the  llouse 
required  it;  but,  inasmuch  as  he  was  a  professional 
gentleman,  and  the  circumstances  might  place  him  in 
an  invidious  position,  he  thought  that  perhaps  the 
House  would  not  demand  it,  especially  as  the  state- 
ment had  not  been  made  to  him  alone,  but  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  noble  friend  the  member  for  Lynn  (Lord 
George  Bentinck).  And  then,  after  alluding  again  to 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer's  "lecture,  which  I 
don't  think  was  needed,"  Mr,  Disraeli  sat  down. 

Nearly  half  a  century  later  Mr.  George  Somes 
Layard,  looking  over  some  papers  that  came  to  him 
after  the  death  of  an  uncle,  found  "a  scrap  of  thin 
bluish-gray  paper,  gilt-edged  and  brown-stained  with 
age."  It  was  in  "the  delicate  handwriting"  of  Lord 
George  Bentinck,  and  it  ran: 

"Harcourt  House, 
"February  16th  [18i7]. 

"My  dear  Sir:     I  particularly  want  to  see  you 
here  at  four  o'clock  exacth'  about  Mr.  Disraeli's  state- 
ment regarding   the  Chancellor  of  the   Exchequer's 
anonymous  informant.     Mr.  Disraeli  will  be  here. 
"I  am,  very  faithfully  j'ours, 

"G.  Bentinck." 

The  name  of  the  professional  informant  was  thus 
at  last  divulged.  "My  uncle,  to  whom  it  was  written," 
says  Mr.  G.  S.  Layard,  "had  had  large  experience  of 
railway  construction  under  Isambard  Kingdon  Bru- 
nei, chief  engineer  to  the  Great  Western  Railway." 

389 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

To  Montagu  Scott,  on  February  17,  1864,  Disraeli 
wrote:  "I  thank  you  for  your  telegram,  and  I  congrat- 
ulate you  on  your  triumph."     When  Dis- 

A  Leader's  "^ 

Congratuia-  raeli  was  returned  in  1811  for  Shrewsbury 
*^*°"^'  as  a  Tory,  he  at  once  sent  the  news  of  his 

victory  to  Sir  Robert  Peel.  The  Minister  would  feel 
inspired  with  great  courage,  he  said,  to  hear  that  the 
electors  of  Shrewsbury  had  ''done  their  duty."  Per- 
haps this  memory  of  his  early  life  softened  him  in 
after-years  when,  as  Prime  Minister  or  Opposition 
leader,  he  himself  was  the  recipient  of  innumerable 
such  notes.  Even  so  bare  a  formulary  as  that  now 
given  becomes  a  bore  when  it  has  to  be  done  to  order 
by  the  dozen;  but  Disraeli,  although  he  hated  letter- 
writing,  industriously  did  this  duty  with  his  own  right 
hand,  and  Lord  Salisbury  and  Mr.  Balfour,  in  this 
order  of  correspondence,  have  maintained  the  tradi- 
tion they  inherited. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  ''Debates:' 

Grosvenor  Gate, 
"April  19t7i,  1862. 

^'Mr.  Disraeli  has  received  from  Mr.  Hansard  a 
proof  of  Debate  of  March  18th,  on  Science,  Art,  etc., 
Proof-Reading  but  he  has  uot  received  any  proof  of  his 
for  "Hansard. "speech  in  the  preceding  debate  on  Mr. 
Ilorsfall's  motion  on  Belligerent  rights. 

"Why  is  this? 

"This  is  important  and  must  be  immediately  at- 
tended to." 

Disraeli,  whose  columns  in  Hansard  are  beyond 
counting,  was  to  the  end  anxious  for  accuracy  in  its 

390 


^y         -^  /^^  ^^^ 

^^^:^^:^^ 

^/^^.^^i.*^  ^^^  <y<^<cy^^^  y/^ 

FACSIMILE   OF   LETTER   FROM   DISRAELI   TO   MONTAGU  SCOTT. 

391 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

reports.  Perhaps  he  counted  on  remedying  the  de- 
fects in  some  newspaper  versions  of  his  utterances. 
After  making  ''a  good  speech  in  a  difficult  position 
on  a  difficult  subject,"  but  delivered  so  far  out  of  range 
as  at  obscure  Aylesbury,  in  1851,  he  complained:  ^'I 
saw  to-day  in  the  Times  two  columns  of  incoherent 
and  contradictory  nonsense  which  made  me  blush, 
though  I  ought  to  be  hardened  bv  this  time."  On  an- 
other  occasion  he  said  he  did  not  mind  what  was  left 
out  of  his  speeches,  but  resented  what  was  put  into 
them.  Hansard  itself  he  mentioned  by  name  in  the 
House  in  1845:  "Why,  Hansard,  instead  of  being  the 
Delphi  of  Downing  Street,  is  but  the  Dunciad  of 
politics." 

For  reasons  not  difficult  to  divine  speeches  in  Par- 
liament occupy  less  space  in  the  press  than  they  did 
thirty  or  forty  j^ears  ago;  with  the  departure  of  Dis- 
raeli public  interest  in  debate  suffered  a  further  de- 
cline. The  day  and  the  month  of  this  letter-date  were 
those  of  that  departure — April  19th. 

To  Sir  Lawrence  Palk,  Bart.,  M.P. 

"GrROSVENOR   GATE, 

"Sunday,  May  Uth,  1865. 

"Mon  Tres  Cher:    I  have  seen  Lord  Stanhope  twice, 
A  Man  of         and  should  like  much  to  see  you. 
Devon.  "Could  you  call  on  me  to-day  at  three 

o'clock,  or  to-morrow  at  twelve? 

"Yours  ever, 

"D." 

Disraeli  several  times  stayed  with  the  Palks  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Exeter,  the  city  of  which  he  had 

392 


A   MAN    OF   DEVON 

occasion  to  write  iu  the  Mvmoir  of  his  father:  ''It  so 
happened  that  about  the  year  1795,  when  he  was  in 
his  twenty-ninth  year,  there  came  over  my  father  that 
mysterious  illness"  (he  was  twenty-four  when  he  him- 
self suffered  from  it)  "to  which  the  youth  of  men  of 
sensibility,  and  especiall}'  literary  men,  is  frequently 
subject — a  failing  of  nervous  energy,  occasioned  by 
study  and  too  sedentary  habits,  early  and  habitual 
reverie,  restless  and  indefinite  purpose.  The  symp- 
toms, physical  and  moral,  are  most  distressing:  lassi- 
tude and  despondency.  And  it  usually  happens,  as 
in  the  present  instance,  that  the  cause  of  suffering  is 
not  recognized;  and  that  medical  men,  misled  by  the 
superficial  symptoms,  and  not  seeking  to  acquaint 
themselves  with  the  psychology  of  their  patients,  ar- 
rive at  erroneous,  often  fatal,  conclusions.  In  this 
case  the  most  eminent  of  the  faculty  gave  it  as  their 
opinion  that  the  disease  was  consumption.  Dr.  Tur- 
ton,  if  I  recollect  aright,  was  the  most  considered 
physician  of  the  daj'.  An  immediate  visit  to  a  warmer 
climate  was  the  specific;  and  as  the  Continent  w^as 
then  disturbed,  and  foreign  residence  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. Dr.  Turton  recommended  that  his  patient  should 
establish  himself  without  delay  in  Devonshire.  When 
my  father  communicated  this  impending  change  in  his 
life  to  Wolcot,  the  modern  Skelton  shook  his  head. 
He  did  not  believe  that  his  friend  was  in  a  consump- 
tion; but,  being  a  Devonshire  man,  and  loving  very 
much  his  native  province,  he  highly  approved  of  the 
remedy.  De  gave  my  father  several  letters  of  intro- 
duction to  persons  of  consideration  at  Exeter;  among 

393 

• 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

others,  one  whom  he  justly  described  as  a  poet  and 
a  physician  and  the  best  of  men,  the  late  Dr.  Hugh 
Downman. 

"Provincial  cities  very  often  enjoy  a  transient  term 
of  intellectual  distinction.  An  eminent  man  often 
collects  around  him  congenial  spirits,  and  the  power 
of  association  sometimes  produces  distant  effects 
which  even  an  individual,  however  gifted,  could 
scarcely  have  anticipated.  A  combination  of  circum- 
stances had  made  at  this  time  Exeter  a  literary 
metropolis.  A  number  of  distinguished  men  flourished 
there  at  the  same  moment;  some  of  their  names  are 
even  now  [1848]  remembered.  Jackson  of  Exeter  still 
survives  as  a  native  composer  of  original  genius.  He 
was  also  an  author  of  high  esthetical  speculation.  The 
heroic  poems  of  Hole  are  forgotten;  but  his  essay  on 
The  Arabian  Nights  is  still  a  cherished  volume  of  ele- 
gant and  learned  criticism.  Hayter  was  the  classic 
antiquary  who  first  discovered  the  art  of  unrolling  the 
MSS.  of  Herculaneum.  There  are  many  others,  noisier 
and  more  bustling,  who  are  now  forgotten,  though 
they  in  some  degree  influenced  the  literary  opinion 
of  their  time.  It  was  said,  and  I  believe  truly,  that 
the  two  principal,  if  not  sole,  organs  of  periodical 
criticism  at  that  time,  I  think  the  Critical  Review  and 
the  Monthhj  Revieir,  were  principally  supported  by 
Exeter  contributions.  No  doubt  this  circumstance 
may  account  for  a  great  deal  of  mutual  praise  and 
sympathetic  opinion  upon  literary  subjects,  which,  by 
a  convenient  arrangement,  appeared  in  the  pages  of 
publications  otherwise  professing  contrary  opinions. 

394 


A   MAN    OF   DEVON 

Exeter  had  then  even  a  Learned  Society  which  pub- 
lished its  Transactions. 

"With  such  companions,  by  whom  he  was  received 
with  a  kindness  and  hospitality  which  to  the  last  he 
often  dwelt  on,  it  may  easily  be  supposed  that  the 
banishment  of  my  father  from  the  delights  of  literary 
London  was  not  as  productive  a  source  of  gloom  as 
the  exile  of  Ovid  to  the  savage  Pontus,  even  if  it  had 
not  been  his  happy  fortune  to  be  received  on  terms  of 
intimate  friendship  by  the  accomplished  family  of 
Mr.  Baring,  who  was  then  member  for  Exeter,^  and 
beneath  whose  roof  he  passed  a  great  portion  of  the 
period  of  nearly  three  years  during  which  he  remained 
in  Devonshire.  The  illness  of  my  father  was  relieved 
but  not  removed  by  this  change  of  life.  Dr.  Downirian 
was  his  physician,  whose  only  remedies  were  port 
wine,  horse  exercise,  rowing  on  the  neighboring  river, 
and  the  distraction  of  agreeable  society.  This  wise 
physician  recognized  the  temperament  of  his  patient, 
and  perceived  that  his  physical  derangement  was  an 
effect  instead  of  a  cause.  My  father,  instead  of  being  in 
a  consumption,  was  endowed  with  a  frame  of  almost 

1  Disraeli  the  Younger  was  to  cross  less  secluded  patlis  with  these  same 
Banners.  It  was  the  early  rumor  of  Sir  Thomas  Baring's  elevation  to  the 
peerage  which  gave  the  boy  at  Bradonham  the  hope  of  first  entering  Parlia- 
ment for  Wycombe ;  and  he  is  found  writing  to  his  sister  in  April,  1836,  a 
year  before  he  did  actually  get  elsewhere  a  seat :  "Tlie  Carlton  is  a  great 
lounge,  and  I  have  found  a  kind  friend  in  Francis  Baring,  Lord  Ashburton's 
eldest  son."  Again,  three  months  later  :  "We  had  a  most  agreeable  party  at 
the  Ashburtons' — the  Baring  family  are  disposed  to  be  very  friendly."  But 
when  a  Baring  became,  later  again,  a  bishop,  the  High  Churchmen  of  Durham 
diocese  did  not  think  this  particular  representative  of  the  Baring  family  at  all 
"friendly."  To  thera  he  was,  in  the  intimate  talk  of  their  rectories,  "Over 
Baring,"  "Past  Baring,"  and  "Bear-in-a-ring." 

395 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

superhuman  strength,  which  was  destined  for  half  a 
century  of  continuous  labor  and  sedentary  life.  The 
vital  principle  in  him,  indeed,  was  so  strong  that  when 
he  left  us  at  eighty-two  it  was  only  as  the  victim  of 
a  violent  epidemic." 

If,  for  his  father's  sake,  Disraeli  later  walked  the 
streets  of  Exeter  and  looked  on  the  Exe,  seeing  all 
the  ducks  as  swans,  another  and  the  only  nearer  asso- 
ciation possible  to  him  was  that  which  existed  be- 
tween the  city  and  his  wife.  The  story  that  she  was 
an  Exeter  shop-girl  Avhen  Wyndham  Lewis  first  be- 
held her  may  go  its  way  wuth  the  legend  that  she  was 
a  Welsh  mill-hand.  She  had  spent  her  girlhood,  how- 
ever, almost  within  sight  of  Haldon,  in  her  father's 
house  at  Brampford  Speke,  and  thither  she  drove  with 
her  husband  to  revisit  the  modest  farmstead  in  which 
her  mother's  fair  fortune  had  enabled  her  to  pass  a 
prosperous  childhood,  the  simplest  ever  passed  by  any 
woman  whose  "predestined  brows"  were  to  wear  a 
coronet  in  their  "own  right." 

Exeter  supplied  also  a  third  link  in  the  chain  of 
Disraeli's  fate.  At  the  Palks'  he  met  the  lady  who, 
by  letter,  had  already  made  his  acquaintance,  and 
who  shares  with  him  and  with  Lady  Beaconsfield  the 
"narrow  house"  at  Hughenden — Mrs.  Brydges  Wil- 
lyams.  Because  he,  too,  met  her  at  the  Palks',  the 
twelfth  Duke  of  Somerset  may  here  be  quoted  as 
writing  to  the  Duchess  (February,  1858) :  "There  was 
a  party  in  the  evening  .  .  .  the  most  remarkable 
person  was  a  little  dark  old  woman,  smothered  up  in 
a  black  wig,  who  is  said  to  be  near  a  hundred,  and 

396 


A   MAN    OF   DEVON 

xevy  rich;  she  is  Disraeli's  great  friend,  and  the  person 
whom  he  comes  to  see  at  Torquay;  as  she  has  no  near 
relations,  it  is  to  be  hoped  she  will  leave  him  her 
money." 

In  Sir  Lawrence  Palk,  Disraeli  found  a  supporter 
wlio  kept  the  pace.  In  the  Keform  Movement  espe- 
cially he  was  no  laggard;  and  when  Disraeli's  Edin- 
burgh phrase  about  "educating"  the  party  was  the 
occasion  of  a  good  deal  of  strained  banter.  Sir  Law- 
rence declared  to  his  constituents  that  he,  for  one, 
had  needed  no  cramming.  The  ever  racy  Bernal 
Osborne  (himself  of  the  tribe  of  Judah  and  an  old 
friend,  though  a  political  oj)ponent,  of  Disraeli)  al- 
luded to  the  Minister  and  to  Sir  Lawrence  Palk  in  a 
rampant  speech  delivered  to  his  Nottingham  constitu- 
ents about  this  time:  "Now,  it  is  all  very  well  to  talk 
of  Lord  Derby  being  the  leader,  but  the  real  man  who 
pulls  the  strings  and  has  reconstructed  the  party  is 
^Ir.  Disraeli.  (Cheers  and  groans.)  Never  groan  at  a 
man  of  such  great  and  brilliant  intelligence.  Al- 
though I  am  opposed  to  him,  I  am  proud  of  him,  and 
so  ought  you  to  be,  and  I  will  tell  you  why;  because  he 
is  a  real  working  man,  who  has  made  himself,  with- 
out connections,  by  nothing  but  his  great  abilities; 
and,  though  I  differ  from  their  application,  I  will  al- 
ways give  my  meed  of  praise  to  the  intelligence  wliicli 
has  made  for  itself  such  a  splendid  position.  I  do  Mr. 
Disraeli  full  credit,  so  much  so  as  to  think  that  though 
he  may  fx'casionally  have  held  the  candle  to  the  de- 
lusions of  tlie  Tory  party,  he  has  never  credited  their 
dogmas,  nor  acted  upon  their  principles.     I  will  not 

307 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

go  into  the  morality  of  the  thing,  but  I  believe  Mr. 
Disraeli,  in  his  heart,  has  always  been  a  Liberal — nay, 
more — has  been  a  Kadieal,  biding  his  time.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Disraeli  remarked  at  the  Lord  Mayor's  Banquet 
that  'a  patriotic  Parliament'  had  passed  the  Reform 
Bill;  but  they  passed  it,  wearied  out  by  details,  and 
as  they  would  any  other  measure  had  they  had  their 
noses  kept  to  the  grindstone  night  and  day,  many  of 
them,  too,  having  paid  heavily  for  their  seats  and  not 
wanting  a  dissolution.  A  good  deal  had  been  heard 
about  the  origin  of  household  suffrage;  there  always 
were  numerous  claimants  for  great  inventions;  Sir 
Isaac  Newton's  were  now"  claimed  for  a  Frenchman, 
Pascal;  but  it  did  not  greatly  matter  whether  it  was 
got  from  Hume  or  Bright,  or,  to  go  further  back,  from 
General  Cartwright,  who  once  sat  for  Nottingham, 
and  who  was  so  Radical  a  Reformer,  he  was  for  abol- 
ishing the  Trinity  and  owing  nothing  to  anybody.  It 
had,  however,  always  been  supposed  that  the  w^ise 
men  came  from  the  East,  but  the  other  day — though, 
perhaps,  not  many  of  them  read  it,  for  the  speaker 
was  not  a  very  distinguished  gentleman — the  other 
day  there  was  a  still  small  voice  heard  in  the  west — 
the  West  of  England.  At  a  Conservative  dinner  this 
small  voice  denied  that  Mr.  Disraeli  had  educated  his 
party.  The  speaker,  for  himself  and  colleague,  said, 
'We  were  not  at  the  great  Parliamentary  academy  of 
Dotheboys  Hall  (laughter);  we  never  were  put  there, 
but  we,  the  members  for  Devonshire,  made  the  dis- 
covery for  ourselves.'  Sir  Lawrence  Palk  claimed  that 
he  suggested  it  to  the  Government  and  they  acted 

398 


THE    WOMAN   OF   THE   WINDl  ALI. 

upon  it.  (A  lauj^h.)"  At  any  rate,  Sir  Lawrence  was 
Disraeli's  Mon  tirs  rlicr  at  a  time  when  the  Derby- 
Disraeli  Keforiu  Bill  was  coming  within  measura- 
ble distance  of  practical  politics.  He  had  done 
with  constituencies  in  April,  1880,  when  he  went 
to  the  Upper  House  as  Lord  Haldou,  and  he  died 
in  1883. 

Mrs,  Brydges  Willyams  became  a  correspondent 
of  Disraeli's  in  1851.  A  stranger,  she  was  the  first 
T-.    ,,,  to  write;  she  was  the  second  to  write; 

1  he  vw  Oman  '  ' 

of  the  Wind-  also  she  was  the  third  to  write.  Many 
women  write  to  statesmen  to  express 
their  admiration;  and  the  mere  fact  that  this  lady 
added  a  request  for  Disraeli's  advice  on  a  matter  of 
business  did  not  deter  him — an  unwilling  correspond- 
ent always — from  putting  her  note  into  the  fire.  In 
her  second  note,  greatly  daring,  she  proposed  a  meet- 
ing beside  the  fountain  in  the  Exhibition  Building. 
Writing  to  her  years  later,  when  he  had  made  her 
acquaintance,  he  says  of  the  1862  Exhibition  at  South 
Kensington: 

"This  is  not  so  fascinating  a  one  as  that  you  remem- 
ber when  you  made  an  assignation  by  the  Crystal 
Fountain  which  T  was  ungallant  enough  not  to  keep, 
being  far  away  when  it  arrived  at  Grosvenor  Gate. 
The  later  exhibition,"  he  adds,  "thougli  not  so  charm- 
ing as  the  first,  is  even  more  wonderful.  That  was  a 
woman — this  is  a  man." 

If  all  men  were  Disraelis,  the  allusion  to  their 
wonderfulness  might  well  stand.    Wonderful  enough 

399 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

a  woman  was  Mrs.  Brydges  Willyams  of  Mount  Brad- 
don,  Torquay,  daughter  and  heiress  of  Mendez  da 
Costa,  a  Jew,  like  the  Disraelis,  of  Spanish  line.  Miss 
da  Costa's  father  was  a  man  about  town  in  the  early 
'thirties  in  London,  and  w^as  commonly  called  the 
Colonel,  in  allusion  to  his  having  fought  with,  or  fol- 
lowed, the  Napoleonic  army  during  the  Peninsular 
War.  Her  husband,  a  member  of  the  Cornish  family 
of  Willyams,  left  her  a  childless  widow  in  1820. 
Thirty  years  elapsed  before  she  wrote  to  Disraeli, 
whose  public  career  she  probably  followed  from  the 
first.  The  two  neglected  letters  were  succeeded  by 
the  third,  in  which  she  pressed  for  the  meeting  by  the 
Crystal  Fountain.  This  time  Disraeli  kept  the  tryst — 
as  marvelous  as  any  in  his  own  novels.  Hear  Mr. 
Froude,  who  perhaps,  himself  a  Devonian,  took  a 
special  interest  in  the  story,  and  in  whose  hands  it 
loses  nothing  in  the  telling: 

"By  the  side  of  the  fountain  he  found  sitting  an  old 
woman,  very  small  in  person,  strangely  dressed,  and 
peculiar  in  manner;  such  a  figure  as  might  be  drawn 
in  an  illustrated  story  for  a  fairy  grandmother.  She 
told  him  a  long  story  of  which  he  could  make  nothing. 
Seeing  that  he  was  impatient  she  placed  an  envelope 
in  his  hands,  which,  she  said,  contained  the  state- 
ment of  a  case  on  which  she  desired  a  high  legal  opin- 
ion. She  begged  him  to  examine  it  at  his  leisure.  He 
thrust  the  envelope  carelessly  in  his  pocket,  and, 
supposing  that  she  was  not  in  her  right  mind,  thought 
no  more  about  the  matter.  The  coat  which  he  was 
wearing  was  laid  aside,  and  weeks  passed  before  he 

400 


THE    WOMAN    OF   THE    WINDFALL 

happened  to  put  it  on  again.  When  he  did  put  it  on, 
the  packet  was  still  where  it  had  been  left.  He  tore  it 
open,  and  found  a  baidv-note  for  a  thousand  pounds 
as  a  humble  contribution  to  his  election  expenses,  with 
the  case  for  the  lawyers,  which  was  less  absurd  than 
he  had  expected.  This  was,  of  course,  submitted  to 
a  superior  counsel,  whose  advice  was  sent  at  once  to 
Torquay  with  acknowledgments  and  apologies  for  the 
delay.  I  do  not  know  what  became  of  the  thousand 
pounds.  It  was  probably  returned.  But  this  was  the 
beginning  of  an  acquaintance  which  ripened  into  a 
close  and  affectionate  friendship.  The  Disraelis  vis- 
ited Mount  Braddon  at  the  close  of  the  London  season 
year  after  year.  The  old  ladj'  was  keen,  clever,  and 
devoted.  A  correspondence  began,  which  grew  more 
and  more  intimate  till  at  last  Disraeli  communicated 
freely  to  her  the  best  of  his  thoughts  and  feelings. 
Presents  were  exchanged  weekly.  Disraeli's  writing- 
table  was  adorned  regularly  with  roses  from  Torquay-, 
and  his  dinners  enriched  with  soles  and  turbot  from 
the  Brixham  trawlers.  He  in  turn  provided  ]Mrs. 
Willyams  with  trout  and  partridges  from  Hughenden, 
and  passed  on  to  her  the  venison  and  the  grouse  which 
his  friends  sent  him  from  the  Highlands.  The  letters 
which  they  exchanged  have  been  happily  preserved  on 
botli  sides.  Disraeli  wrote  himself  when  he  had 
leisure;  when  he  had  none,  INIrs.  Disraeli  wrote  instead 
of  him.  The  curious  and  delicate  idyll  was  prolonged 
for  twelve  years,  at  the  end  of  which  Mrs.  Willyams 
died,  bequeathing  to  him  her  whole  fortune,  and  ex- 
pressing a  wish,  which  of  course  was  complied  with, 
2'  401 


BEXJAMIN    DISRAELI 

that  she  might  be  buried  at  Hughenden,  Dear  the  spot 
where  Disraeli  was  himself  to  lie." 

The  letters  are  generally  political,  and  rarely,  as 
this  one  is,  at  all  personal.  Thus  in  1861,  in  an  earlier 
letter  than  this,  after  speaking  of  the  United  States 
as  the  unexpected  ''scene  of  a  mighty  revolution,"  he 
adds:  "Xo  one  can  foresee  its  results" — a  truth  which 
he  rather  i)erversely,  as  times  have  shown,  proceeds 
to  contradict  by  declaring:  ''They  must,  however,  tell 
immensely  in  favor  of  an  aristocracy."  It  may  be 
added  that  Mrs.  Willyams  at  first  wished  that  Dis- 
raeli, as  her  heir,  should  prefix  to  his  surname  her 
maiden  name.  Da  Costa;  but  she  did  not  persevere 
in  pressing  this  proposition  as  a  condition. 

Disraeli  to  Mrs.  Bridges  Willyams. 

"HUGHENDEX, 

''September  2nd,  1862. 

"I  am  quite  myself  again;  and  as  I  have  been  drink- 
ing your  magic  beverage  for  a  week,  and  intend  to 
"The  Lady  pursue  it,  you  may  fairly  claim  all  the 
of  Shaiott."  glory  of  my  recovery,  as  a  fairy  cures  a 
knight  after  a  tournament  or  a  battle.  I  have  a  great 
weakness  for  mutton  broth,  especially  with  that 
magical  sprinkle  which  you  did  not  forget.  I  shall 
call  you  in  future  after  an  old  legend  and  a  modern 
poem,  'The  Lady  of  Shaiott.'  I  think  the  water  of 
which  it  was  made  would  have  satisfied  even  you,  for 
it  was  taken  every  day  from  our  stream,  which  rises 
among  the  chalk  hills,  glitters  in  the  sun  over  a  very 
pretty  cascade,  then  spreads  and  sparkles  into  a  little 
lake  in  which  is  a  natural  island.  Since  T  wrote  to  you 
last  we  have  launched  in  the  lake  two  most  beautiful 

402 


"AN    AGE    OF    INllNITK    ROMANCE" 

cyguets, to  whom  we  have  given  the  iiaines  of  lleio  and 
Leauder.  They  are  a  source  to  us  of  unceasing  in- 
terest and  amusement.  They  are  very  handsome  and 
very  large,  but  as  yet  dove-colored.  I  can  no  longer 
write  to  you  of  Cabinet  Councils  or  Parliamentary 
struggles.  Here  I  see  nothing  but  trees  or  books,  so 
you  must  not  despise  the  news  of  my  swans." 


To  Mrs.  Drydges  Willi/aDis. 

"December  W},  1863. 

"They  say  the  Greeks,  resolved  to  have  an  English 
King,  in  consequence  of  the  refusal  of  Prince  Alfred 
"An  Age  of  ^^  be  their  monarch,  intend  to  elect  Lord 
Infinite  Stanley.    If  he  accepts  the  charge,  I  shall 

Romance."  Yq^q  a  powerful  friend  and  colleague.  It 
is  a  dazzling  adventure  for  the  House  of  Stanley,  but 
they  are  not  an  imaginative  race,  and  I  fancy  they 
will  prefer  Know^sley  to  the  Parthenon,  and  Lanca- 
shire to  the  Attic  plains.  It  is  a  privilege  to  live  in 
this  age  of  rapid  and  brilliant  events.  What  an  error 
to  consider  it  a  utilitarian  age!  It  is  one  of  infinite 
romance.  Thrones  tumble  dowm,  and  crowns  are 
offered  like  a  fairy  tale;  and  the  most  powerful  people 
in  the  world,  male  and  female,  a  few^  years  back  were 
adventurers,  exiles,  and  demireps.  Vive  la  bagatelle! 
Adieu. 

"Fehrnary  7th,  186?. 
"The  Greeks  really  want  to  make  my  friend  Lord 
Stanley  their  king.  This  beats  any  novel.  I  think  he 
ought  to  take  the  crown;  but  he  will  not.  Had  I  his 
youth,  I  would  not  hesitate  even  with  the  earldom  of 
Derby  in  the  distance." 

403 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Oddly  enough,  Disraeli  himself  had  once,  if  only 
for  a  moment,  fancied  himself,  under  favorable  condi- 
tions, a  plausible  candidate  for  the  Greek  crown.  The 
story,  which  takes  us  back  more  than  thirty-three 
years,  was  told  in  an  article  on  "The  Early  Life  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield"  in  the  Quarterly  Review  (January, 
1889):  "At  the  end  of  November  [1830]  he  reached 
Athens.  The  city  was  still  in  the  possession  of  the 
Turks,  but  was  about  to  be  handed  over  to  the  Greek 
Commission  appointed  to  receive  it.  The  Greeks,  who 
were  seeking  for  a  king,  were  so  'utterly  astounded' 
by  the  magnificence  and  strangeness  of  his  whimsical 
costume,  and  so  much  impressed  by  his  general  ap- 
pearance, that  he  'gathered  a  regular  crowd  round 
his  quarters,  and  had  to  come  forward  and  bow  like 
Don  Miguel  and  Donna  Maria.'  'Had  he  £25,000  to 
throw  away,  he  might,  he  really  believed,  increase  his 
headaches  by  wearing  a  crown.'  "  As  it  was,  he  con- 
tented himself  on  a  week's  fare  of  "the  wild  boar  of 
Pentelicus  and  the  honey  of  Hymettus."  Had  Lord 
Stanley  not  "preferred  Knowsley  to  the  Parthenon," 
the  fortunes  of  Disraeli's  further  history  might  have 
been  improved  by  the  withdrawal  of  a  colleague  who 
afterward  deserted  him  at  a  critical  moment,  and  of 
whom  the  Chief  later  said  that  he  never  seemed  to 
show  any  pleased  animation  unless  he  was  surrender- 
ing a  British  interest. 

"  October  17t7},  18QS. 

"The  troubles  and  designs  of  the  French  Emperor 
are  aggravated  and  disturbed  by  the  death  of  Billault, 

404 


i.i»i;i)    hi;a(<  >.\sin;i.i),    into. 

The  statue  by  Lord    Honald   Cower,   in    ihi-   Xaliuiial    I'.ntrait   (lallcrj-, 


CAPITALISTS   AS   PEACEMAKEHS 

bis  only  I'arliaiiK'iitary  orator  and  a  lirst-rak'  one. 
With,  for  the  lii'st  time,  a  real  Opposition  to  en- 
Capitalists  as  c'onnter,  and  formed  of  the  old  trained 
Peacemakers,  speakers  of  Louis  Philippe's  reign,  in 
addition  to  the  3'oung  democracy  of  oratory  which 
the  last  revolution  has  itself  produced,  the  incon- 
veniences, perhaps  the  injuries,  of  this  untimely  de- 
cease are  incalculable.  It  may  even  force,  by  way  of 
distraction,  the  Emperor  into  war.  Our  own  Ministry 
have  managed  their  affairs  very  badly,  according  to 
their  friends.  The  Polish  question  is  a  diplomatic 
Frankenstein,  created  out  of  cadaverous  remnants  by 
the  mystic  blundering  of  Lord  Russell.  At  present 
the  peace  of  the  world  has  been  preserved  not  by 
statesmen,  but  by  capitalists.  For  the  last  three 
months  it  has  been  a  struggle  between  the  secret  so- 
cieties and  the  Emperor's  millionaires.  Rothschild 
hitherto  has  won,  but  the  death  of  Billault  may  be 
as  fatal  to  him  as  the  poignard  of  a  Polish  patriot, 
for  I  believe  in  that  part  of  the  world  they  are  called 
'patriots,'  though  in  Naples  only  'brigands.'  " 

This  letter  was  written  w'hen  Poland  had  revolted 
against  Russia,  weakened  by  the  Crimean  war,  and 
when  France,  after  the  campaign  against  Austrian 
rule  in  Italy,  seemed  likely  to  turn  her  hand,  for  dis- 
traction from  internal  troubles,  to  an  anti-Russian 
adventure.  Disraeli,  who  weighed  the  w^ords  "pa- 
triots" and  ''brigands,"  falls  into  the  popular  con- 
fusion between  Frankenstein  and  his  creation. 

To  Mrs.  Brydges  Wilhjams. 

"  Nbve7nber  5t7i,  1863. 
"The   great    Imperial   sphinx   is   at   this   moment 
speaking.    I  shall  not  know  the  mysterious  utterances 

405 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

until  to-morrow,  and  shall  judge  of  bis  conduct  as 
much  by  his  silence  as  by  his  words.  The  world  is 
The  Supposed  ^^^^y  alarmed  and  very  restless.  Although 
Peril  for  England  appears  to  have  backed  out  of 

Prussia.  ^i^ig  possible  war,  there  are  fears  that  the 

French  ruler  has  outwitted  us,  and  that  by  an  alliance 
with  Austria  and  the  aid  of  the  Italian  armies  he  may 
cure  the  partition  of  Poland  by  a  partition  of  Prussia; 
Austria  in  that  case  to  regain  Silesia,  which  Frederick 
the  Great  won  a  century  ago  from  Maria  Theresa, 
France  to  have  the  Khine,  and  Galicia  and  Posen  to 
be  restored  to  Poland.  If  this  happens,  it  will  give 
altogether  a  new  form  and  color  to  European  politics. 
The  Queen  is  much  alarmed  for  the  future  throne  of 
her  daughter;  but  as  the  war  will  be  waged  for  the 
relief  of  Poland,  of  which  England  has  unwisely  ap- 
proved, and  to  which  in  theory  she  is  pledged,  we  shall 
really  be  checkmated  and  scarcely  could  find  an  ex- 
cuse to  interfere  even  if  the  nation  wished." 

The  impending  expansion  and  invincibility  of 
Prussia  was  not  then  foreseen,  even  by  cool  heads  that 
had  no  fears  or  prepossessions  born  of  family  affec- 
tions. Sir  Henry  Layard,  for  instance,  a  good  speci- 
men of  the  ambassador  on  whose  wisdom  and  pre- 
science our  national  existence  hangs,  writing  three 
years  earlier  (1860)  of  the  affairs  of  disturbed  Europe, 
had  calculated  on  Prussia's  taking  a  place  inferior  to 
that  of  Italy  in  the  scale  of  nations:  "If  Garibaldi, who 
is  the  weakest  and  most  easily  influenced  man  in  the 
world,  can  only  be  kept  quiet,  and  the  set  of  scoun- 
drels who  surround  him  and  lead  him  be  sent  about 
their  business,  Austria  at  the  same  being  kept  within 
her  boundaries,  and  not  allowed  to  interfere,  there  is 

400 


THE   DISRAELI   ARMS 

every  reasou  to  believe  that  iu  teu  years  from  this 
time  Italy  will  take  her  place  among  the  great 
nations  of  Enrope,  ami  will  probably  far  exceed 
at  least  two  of  them — perhaps  even  three — ^Kussia, 
Austria,  and  Prussia,  in  prosperity,  material  wealth, 
and  strength. " 


Mrs.  Brydges  Willyams  corresponded  with  Disraeli 
(claiming  kinship,  as  he  did,  with  the  Lara  family) 
The  Disraeli  about  quarterings  for  her  coat-of-arms. 
Arms.  In  her  behalf  he  communicated  with  "am- 

bassadors and  Ministers  of  State,"  and  even  ex- 
changed parleyings  with  the  private  cabinet  of  the 
Queen  of  Spain.  The  following  letter  contains  allu- 
sions to  his  own  crest,  which  showed  the  tower  of 
Castile  and  his  motto,  Fort  I  nihil  (lifjfjcilc,  used  by  him 
as  early  as  at  his  election  at  Shrewsbury: 

To  Mix.   /h\i/(](j('.s   ]]'ill!/(n))s. 

"  July  2?yr(I,  1859. 

"The  Spanish  families  never  had  supporters, 
crests,  or  mottoes.  The  tower  of  Castile,  which  I  use 
as  a  crest,  and  which  was  taken  from  one  of  the  quar- 
ters of  my  shield,  was  adopted  by  a  Lara  in  the  six- 
teenth century  in  Italy,  where  crests  were  the  custom 
— at  least  in  the  north  of  Italy — copied  from  the 
CJerman  heraldry.  This  also  applies  to  my  motto. 
None  of  the  southern  races,  I  believe,  have  supporters 
or  crests.  This  is  Teutonic.  With  regard  to  the  coro- 
net, in  old  days,  especially  in  th(»  south,  all  coronets 
were  the  same,  and  the  distinction  of  classes  from  the 
ducal  strawberry  leaf  to  th<'  bai'on's  balls  is  of  com- 
paratively modern  introduction." 

407 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 


To  the  Editor  of  the  ''Times." 

"Do^v^'IXG  Street, 
"  March  6th,  1868. 

"Sir:  Lord  Eussell  observed  last  night  in  the 
House  of  Lords  that  I  'boasted  at  Edinburgh  that 
The  "Edu-  whilst  during  seven  years  I  opposed  a  re- 
cator."'  duction  of  the  borough  franchise,  I  had 

been  all  that  time  educating  my  party  with  the  view 
of  bringing  about  a  much  greater  reduction  of  the 
franchise  than  that  which  my  opponents  had  pro- 
posed.'' As  a  general  rule,  I  never  notice  misrepre- 
sentations of  what  I  may  have  said;  but  as  this  charge 
was  made  against  me  in  an  august  assembly,  and  by 
a  late  First  Minister  of  the  Crown,  I  will  not  refrain 
from  observing  that  the  charge  has  no  foundation. 
Nothing  of  the  kind  was  said  by  me  at  Edinburgh.  I 
said  there  that  the  Tory  party,  after  the  failure  of 
their  bill  of  1859,  had  been  educated  for  seven  years 
on  the  subject  of  a  Parliamentary  Reform,  and  during 
that  interval  had  arrived  at  five  conclusions,  which, 
with  their  authority,  I  had  at  various  times  an- 
nounced, viz.: 

"1.  That  the  measure  should  be  complete. 

"2.  That  the  representation  of  no  place  should  be 
entirely  abrogated. 

"3.  That  there  must  be  a  real  Boundary  Commis- 
sion. 

"4.  That  the  county  representation  should  be  con- 
siderably increased. 

"5.  That  the  borough  franchise  should  be  estab- 
lished on  the  principle  of  rating. 

"This  is  what  I  said  at  Edinburgh,  and  it  is  true. 
"I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

408 


THE    "EDUCATOR" 

Yery  rarely  did  Disraeli  address  letters,  after  he 
entered  rarliament,  to  the  public  press.  Hehadhadhis 
surfeit  with  the  O'Connell  controversy;  later,  he  likes 
to  pay  his  faithful  constituents  the  compliment  of  his 
political  confidences;  and,  on  occasion,  there  was  a 
Duke  of  Marlborough,  a  Grey  de  Wilton,  or  a  Lord 
Dartmouth  to  be  addressed  in  a  document  seeking  a 
publicit}^  greater  than  that  gained  by  a  letter  indited 
to  any  one  newspaper,  and  conferring,  besides,  upon 
its  recipient  a  personal  gratification.  The  letter 
which  offers  an  exception  to  this  rule  was  called  forth 
by  the  sentence  it  quotes  from  Lord  Russell;  but  the 
setting  of  that  sentence  was  itself  noteworthy.  Earl 
Russell,  a  sincere  Reformer  who  had  not  succeeded  in 
''educating''  hi.s  party  w'hen  Ministers  like  Lord  Palm- 
erston  ruled  its  councils,  might  well  be  forgiven  a 
momentary  pang  at  the  better  fortune  attending  the 
leader  of  a  party  that  had,  in  general,  looked  upon  the 
popular  suffrage  with  suspicion  and  even  aversion. 
"We  know  now,"  said  Lord  Russell,  with  some  acidity, 
"that  for  three  years  the  [Derby-Disraeli]  Govern- 
ment has  been  carried  on  upon  the  principle  that, 
having  declared  against  any  reduction  whatever  in  the 
franchise,  the  Ministers  of  the  Crown  meant  all  the 
time  to  make  a  larger  reduction  in  the  franchise  than 
was  proposed  by  the  Liberal  party.  The  consequence 
is  a  Government  which  openly  professes  one  thing 
and  means  another."  The  Duke  of  Marlborough  with 
some  warmth  challenged  the  speaker.  "If  the  noble 
duke  wishes  to  know  what  I  mean,"  explained  Lord 
Russell,  "I  must  refer  him  to  a  speech  made  by  the 

409 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

present  Prime  Minister  at  Edinburgh,  in  which  the 
course  taken  by  the  Government  was  not  called  a 
course  of  deception,  it  was  not  called,  as  Mr.  Disraeli 
once  called  the  Government  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  'an 
organized  hypocrisy,'  but  it  was  called  'a  process  of 
education.'  "  It  was,  in  part,  the  old  story  that  where 
a  Jack  Straw  would  be  hung,  a  Lord  John  Straw 
could  head  a  Government;  that  "the  country  party" 
would  confidingly  leap  into  the  arms  of  a  Derbj^-Dis- 
raeli  Cabinet,  even  if  it  were  "a  leap  in  the  dark" 
where  they  would  assume  a  defensive  and  an  offensive 
attitude,  in  presence  of  their  foes.  If  "bad  form'' 
mostly  consists  of  the  manners  of  people  we  dislike, 
"dangerous  legislation"  often  has  its  danger  appre- 
hended because  it  comes  from  a  distrusted  quarter. 

To  Ihc  livv.  Arthur  Balrr,  Rector  of  Addluf/ton. 

"HUGHEXDEN   MAXOR, 

"■Maundy  Thursday,  1868. 

"Rev.  Sir:  I  have  just  received  your  letter,  in 
which,  as  one  of  my  constituents,  you  justify  your 
Parties  in  right  to  ask  for  some  explanation  of  my 
Church  a  alleged  assertion  that  the   High  Church 

Necessity.  Ritualists  had  been  long  in  secret  com- 
bination and  were  now  in  open  federacy  with  Irish 
Romanists  for  the  destruction  of  the  union  between 
Church  and  State. 

"I  acknowledge  your  right  of  making  this  inquiry; 
and  if  I  do  not  notice  in  detail  the  various  suggestions 
in  your  letter,  it  is  from  no  want  of  courtesy,  but  from 
the  necessity  of  not  needlessly  involving  myself  in 
literary  controversy. 

"You  are  under  a  misapprehension  if  you  suppose 

410 


TAUTIES    IN    CHURCH   A    NECESSITY 

that  1  intended  to  cast  any  shir  npon  the  High  Chnich 
[uirty;  1  have  the  highest  respect  for  tlie  High  Church 
l>arty.  I  believe  there  is  no  body  of  men  in  this  coun- 
try to  which  we  have  been  more  indebted,  from  the 
days  of  Queen  Anne  to  tlie  days  of  (^ueen  Victoria,  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  orthodox  faith,  the  rights  of 
the  Crown,  and  the  liberties  of  the  people. 

"In  saying  this  I  have  no  wish  to  intimate  that 
the  obligations  of  the  countr}^  to  the  other  great  party 
of  the  Church  are  not  equally  significant.  I  have 
never  looked  ujjon  the  existence  of  parties  in  our 
Church  as  a  calamity;  I  look  upon  them  as  a  necessity, 
as  a  beneficent  necessity^  They  are  the  natural  and 
inevitable  consequences  of  the  mild  and  liberal  prin- 
ciples of  our  ecclesiastical  polity,  and  of  the  varying 
and  opposite  elements  of  the  human  mind  and  char- 
acter. When  I  spoke,  I  referred  to  an  extreme  faction 
in  the  Church,  of  very  modern  date,  which  does  not 
conceal  its  ambition  to  destroy  the  connection  be- 
tween Church  and  State,  and  which  I  have  reason  to 
believe  has  been  in  secret  communication,  and  is  now 
in  open  confederacy,  with  the  Irish  Romanists  for  the 
purpose. 

"The  Liberation  Society-,  with  its  shallow  and 
short-sighted  fanaticism,  is  a  mere  instrument  in  the 
hands  of  this  confederacy,  and  will  probably  be  the 
first  victim  of  the  S])iritual  despotism  the  Liberation 
Society  is  now  blindly  working  to  establish. 

"As  I  hold  that  the  dissolution  of  the  union  be- 
tween Church  and  State  will  cause  permanently  a 
greater  revolution  in  this  country  than  foreign  con- 
quest, I  shall  use  my  utmost  energies  to  defeat  these 
fatal  machinations. 

"Believe  me,  reverend  sir,  your  faithful  member 
and  servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

411 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

The  speech  containing  the  offending  jjhrase  was 
that  delivered  by  Disraeli  as  First  Lord  of  the  Treas- 
ury in  the  House  of  Commons  in  April,  1868,  when 
Mr.  Gladstone  put  his  Irish  Church  Disestablishment 
resolutions  on  the  table: 

''The  High  Church  Ritualists,  of  whom  the  right 
honorable  gentleman  (Mr.  Gladstone)  is  the  repre- 
sentative here  to-night,  and  the  Irish  followers  of  the 
Pope,  have  long  been  in  secret  confederacy,  but  they 
are  now  in  open  combination.  Under  the  guise  of 
Liberalism,  under  the  pretense  of  legislating  in  the 
spirit  of  the  age,  they  are  about,  as  they  think,  to  seize 
upon  the  supreme  authority.  They  have  their  hand 
upon  the  Realm  of  England;  but  so  long  as  by  the 
favor  of  her  Majesty  I  stand  here  I  will  oppose  to  the 
uttermost  the  attempts  they  are  making.  If  they  are 
successful,  they  will  do  much  more  than  defeat  a  po- 
litical opponent — they  will  seriously  endanger  even 
the  tenure  of  the  Crown." 

The  common  bond  of  a  Disestablishment  policy 
threatened  or  approved  alike  by  Dr.  Pusey  and  by  the 
Catholic  hierarchy  of  Ireland  (who  ordered  public 
thanksgivings  for  Mr.  Gladstone's  Act  when  it  was 
finally  passed)  was  Disraeli's  justification  for  an  asso- 
ciation of  two  sections  whose  large  agreements  are 
yet  lost  in  lesser  feuds.  Disraeli's  pleasure  in  his  first 
Prime  Ministry  and  in  his  passage  of  a  Reform  Bill; 
his  sense,  too,  of  the  sudden  thrust  upon  him  of  a 
"burning  question"  which  :Mr.  Gladstone  had  only 
three  years  earlier  described  as  "lying  at  a  distance 
I  can  not  measure"  and  as  "out  of  all  bearing  with  the 

412 


PARTIES    IN    CHURCH   A   NECESSITY 

puliiics  of  the  day"; — these  partly  account  for  Dis- 
raeli's heat  and  for  the  discrepancy  as  between  his 
predictions  and  the  now  generally  recognized  facts. 
The  speech,  too,  had  its  accidental  notoriety  as  being 
''delivered"  (said  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  followed)  "under 
the  influence  of — a  heated  imagination."  The  pause 
after  the  "of,"  together  with  the  roar  of  invited  laugh- 
ter from  the  Opposition  that  filled  it,  were  the  method 
by  which  this  section  of  the,  at  times,  very  common 
Commons  of  England  notified  that  they  had  seen  the 
Prime  Minister  swallow  at  intervals  during  his  speech 
a  "pick-me-up"  supplied  to  him  by  the  friendly  hand 
of  (I  think)  Lord  George  Hamilton.  The  strain  upon 
a  Prime  Minister  is  great  always;  at  this  period  it  was 
indeed  all  but  overwhelming,  and  Disraeli,  in  the 
hands  of  doctors  for  insomnia,  was  able  to  make  this 
great  effort  only  by  aid  of  repeated  doses  of  egg-and- 
brandy.  The  innuendo  of  Mr.  Gladstone  gained  the 
readier  laugh  from  those  who  noted  the  rather  un- 
usual mannerisms  of  the  Prime  Minister.  Always  a 
nervous  speaker,  and  one  who  found  relief  in  a  va- 
riety of  animated  gestures  and  manipulations,  Dis- 
raeli on  this  occasion  made  his  handkerchief  more 
thati  usually  prominent  as  a  "property,"  waving  it  in 
the  face  of  the  foe — no  white  flag,  but  a  red  ensign 
of  defiance. 

The  "Maundy  Thursday"  dating  of  a  letter  written 
on  that  day  was  less  usual  then  than  now,  and  it  gave 
rise,  as  did  so  many  other  minor  naturalnesses  on  Dis- 
raeli's part,  to  an  outburst  of  derision  (the  least  hon- 
orable  and   least   lovely   sentiment   known  to   men) 

413 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

which  he  who  reads  past  political  history  in  the  light 
of  to-day  will  find  impossible  of  correlation  with  the 
dignity  and  intelligence  of  grown-up  men.  There  are 
still  to  be  found  instances  in  which  the  example  of 
Parliaments  has  degraded  a  nation. 

The  homage  paid  to  Lord  Beaconsfleld  after  his 
death  came  rather  curiously  to  be  cited  by  an  ad- 
vanced Ritualist  as  a  precedent  for  the  veneration  of 
images.  In  the  ^t.  Stephen's  Parish  Magazine  of  Devon- 
port  for  February,  1903,  the  Rev.  H.  H.  Leeper  writes: 
"It  seems  strange  that  in  these  so-called  enlightened 
days  there  should  be  found  any  to  object  to  the  pres- 
ence of  images  of  Christ  and  His  mother  and  saints 
in  our  churches.  The  very  people  who  set  up  statues 
of  statesmen  and  patriots  in  our  streets  and  public 
squares  refuse  to  countenance  a  like  honor  being  paid 
to  saints  in  our  churches.  The  statue  of  a  certain  de- 
ceased gentleman  on  his  death-day  may  be  honored  by 
huge  votive  offerings  in  the  shape  of  flowers  placed  at 
its  base.  Against  such  worship  no  voice  of  protest  is 
raised.  Why,  then,  is  it  an  act  of  idolatry  to  honor 
in  like  manner  a  statue  of  Christ  or  His  mother  set  up 
in  His  church?"  Assuredly  the  little  Jewish  boy  who 
played  in  King's  Road  never  thought  to  figure  in 
polemical  literature  as  an  argument  in  favor  of  the 
setting  up  of  sacred  images  in  Anglican  churches. 


414 


NATURAL   SELECTION 


To   W.  J<,!uisloii,  M.l\ 

"HUGHEXDEN   MANOR, 

''December  8th,  1869. 

"Dear  Mk.  Johnston:  The  leader  of  a  party  in 
the  Houses  of  Parliament  is  never  nominated.  The 
Natural  Selection  is  always  the  spontaneous  act  of 

Selection.  the  party  of  the  House  in  which  he  sits. 
It  was  so  in  the  case  of  Lord  Cairns,  who  yielded,  not 
unwillingly,  to  the  general  wish,  Lord  Salisbury  being 
one  of  the  warmest  of  his  solicitors.  It  was  so  in  my 
own  case.  Lord  Derby  appointed  me  to  the  leader- 
ship, but  the  part}'  chose  to  follow  me,  and  the  rest 
ensued.  The  same  jealous}^  of  interference  with  an 
arrangement  in  which  their  own  feelings,  and  even 
tastes,  should  preeminently  be  consulted  would,  no 
doubt,  be  felt  if  the  leadership  of  a  House  was  to  be 
decided  b}'  the  votes  of  those  who  did  not  sit  in  it. 

''I  make  no  doubt  our  friends  in  the  House  of  Lords 
will  in  due  season  find  a  becoming  chief,  but  our  inter- 
position will  not  aid  them.  They  will  be  better  helped 
to  a  decision  b.y  events. 

"Yours  sincerely, 

"B.  Disraeli." 


Edward,  fourteenth  Earl  of  Derby — ("the  Rupert 
of  Debate''  was  a  name  given  him  in  the  old  days 
when  the  then  Lord  Stanley  was  a  Peelite  and  his 
future  colleague  the  dethroner  of  Peel) — resigned  the 
Premiership  in  the  February  of  1808.  It  was  then 
that  the  Queen's  summons  to  Disraeli  to  form  a  Gov- 
ernment was  borne  to  him  by  his  old  o])i>(>nent  at  High 
Wycombe,  General  Grey.  The  Times,  noting  the  ad- 
vent of  Disraeli  to  supreme  power,  paid  a  tribute  to 

415 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"the  courage,  the  readiness,  the  unfailing  temper"  of 
Disraeli,  who  had  "reconstructed"  the  old  Tory  party, 
and  thrice  brought  it  into  power. 

To  Baron  Tauchnitz. 

"HuGHENDE^v  Manor, 
''September  23rd,  1870. 

"What  are  called  Lives  of  me  abound.  They  are 
generally  infamous  libels,  which  I  have  invariably 
Lives  of  Him  treated  with  utter  indifference.  Some- 
"infamous  times  I  ask  myself  what  will  Grub  Street 
Libels."  ^^  after  my  departure — who  will  there  be 

to  abuse  and  caricature?  ...  I  hope  you  are 
well.  I  am  very  busy,  and  rarely  write  letters,  but  I 
would  not  use  the  hand  of  another  to  an  old  friend." 

The  books  written  about  Disraeli — other  than 
those  written  about  Disraeli  hj  Disraeli — make  a 
little  library  in  themselves.  There  is  The  Right  Hon. 
Benjamin  Disraeli,  M.P.:  A  Literari/  and  Political  Biog- 
raphy, published  by  Mr.  Thomas  Macknight  in  1854. 
Disraeli  had  issued  his  Lord  George  Bcntinck:  A  Polit- 
ical Biography  in  a  volume  of  similar  size  two  years 
earlier.  In  the  Macknight  memoir  we  have  a  North 
of  Ireland  journalist,  the  most  uncosmopolitan  of 
men,  writing  of  the  most  cosmopolitan.  The  book, 
angry  all  through,  has  its  shifty  foundations  in  the 
shiftiness  of  the  hero  of  the  novel  of  Disraeli's  teens, 
Vivian  Grey.  Disraeli,  said  Macknight,  was  his  own 
hero,  Machiavelli  in  little.  As  well  might  George 
Eliot  be  identified  with  Hetty  Sorrel:  both  were  wom- 
en,   and    there    is    the    independent    testimony   that 

416 


I.oin)    HEACONSFIELD. 

li-iiui   a   c'ar\-('(l   'n'ory  cainco 

Prc^riiteil  b}-  (^nffu   \'ic-tori:i  to  her   I.ady  of  the   Bedchamber 

Jane,   Marchioiioss  of   l^ly. 

B]i  kind  permission  of  Lady  Marion   Welter. 


LIVES   OF   IIIM    'INFAMOUS   LIHELS" 

every  woiiiau  is  at  heart  a  rake.  Of  course  llettv  on 
the  scaffold — the  important  episode,  after  all — will  be 
ignored  by  the  ingenious  commentator.  The  equal 
catastrophe  of  Vivian  Grey's  undisciplined  ambitions 
is  also  left  out  of  reckoning  by  these  clamorous  wit- 
nesses to  the  Grey-Disraeli  identitj-.  If  it  had  been 
written  in  the  first  person,  it  could  not  have  been 
more  clear,  they  thought;  indeed,  the  use  of  an  alias 
was  the  very  commonplace  of  guilty  adventure.  Those 
who  suggest  that  Disraeli  had  not  brought  together 
two  English  statesmen  by  stratagem  for  his  own  pur- 
poses (he  did  not  even  know,  when  he  wrote  it,  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham,  his  Marquis  of  Carabas)  are  told 
that  dates  are  always  juggled;  and  the  averment  that 
Disraeli  was  not  present  when  Vivian  Grey  killed  in 
a  duel  a  former  friend,  nor  when  in  a  German  forest 
he  saved  a  Grand  Duke,  nor  when,  in  a  Grand  Ducal 
palace  he  fell  in  love  with  a  Princess  who  fell  in  love 
with  him,  nor  when  he  ended  his  career  in  a  wood  in 
Bohemia,  extorts  the  answer  that  any  penny  attorney 
can  support  an  alibi.  This  is  no  travesty.  Disraeli 
put  so  much  of  himself  into  his  books  that  he  is,  of 
course,  particularly  vulnerable  as  a  whipping-boy  for 
the  fools  or  knaves  who  form  a  small  minority  of  his 
characters.  So  much  of  himself  did  he  put  there  that 
if  one  said  that  he  resembled  Vivian  Grey  in  that  he 
had  desperate  ambitions,  and  was  caged  by  circum- 
stance and  felt  he  must  somehow  or  other  break  the 
bar,  the  assumption  should  pass.  As  it  stands,  it  rep- 
resents a  method  of  slander  of  which  the  Young  Gen- 
eration of  to-day  have  before  them  no  parallel,  and 
28  417 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

which,  in  the  domaiu  of  politics,  was  illustrated  hy 
Mr.  Chamberlain's  password  into  public  life:  "I  do 
not  think  that  Mr.  Disraeli,  if  he  tried,  could  speak 
the  truth."  ^  Many  madmen — those  actually  in  asy- 
lums— have  been  chased  there  by  phantom  Jesuits; 
and  the  deranged  brains  of  Jesuits,  I  have  heard,  are 
similarly  troubled  with  visions  of  exasperating  Free- 
masons. The  rage — no  other  word  suffices— aroused 
by  the  very  name  of  Disraeli,  by  the  luck  that  be 
readily  got  readers  for  his  novels,  by  his  important 
presence  in  public  life,  transports  one  out  of  the  ordi- 
nary regions  of  literary  likes  and  dislikes,  political 
leanings  and  aversions,  into  the  chamber  of  the  moral 
rack.  Disraeli  had  no  vendetta  against  the  Inquisi- 
tion that  had  driven  his  fathers  from  "spell-bound 
Spain";  for  he  knew  that  the  persecuting  spirit,  how- 
ever disguised  in  England,  was  not  dead.  The 
alien  triumphed  in  the  end;  and  the  record  of  his 
triumph  is  pleasant  to  tell  because  it  is  also 
the  exhaustion,  for  a  long  space  to  come,  of  the 
fires  of  political  feud,  the  story  of  the  education  not 
only  of  a  party  in  the  ways  of  tolerance,  but  of  the 
whole  nation  in  a  saving  cosmopolitanism.  If  Disraeli 
bore  his  traducers  no  grudge,  it  would  be  superfluous 
indeed  for  true  Dizzyites  to  bear  them  any. 

Years  passed  over  the  Macknight  biography;  then 
Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor  followed  suit;  but  the  rather 
pompous  rhetoric  of  the  North  of  Ireland  journalist 
gave  way  to  true  Celtic  liveliness  of  narrative  and  that 

'  This  is  not  one  of  the  sayings  that  come  under  the  "What  I  have  said, 
I  have  said  "  formula.     For  Mr.  Chamberlain  made  a  retraction. 

418 


LIVES    OK    IIIJM    "INFAMOUS    LIBELS 

plcasiiiv  ill  (.•lulgcliiii;'  wliitli  becomes  positively  coii- 
tagioiis.  As  special  ])lea(liii^'  it  is  gay  stuft' — the  brief 
agaiust  Disraeli  again  loadcil  iiicriiniiiatiiigly  with 
quotations  from  the  months  of  his  characters,  par- 
ticularly the  villains.  I  have  read  and  reread  it,  and 
lately  read  it  again,  which  I  rather  gather  the  author 
himself  has  not  done.  Once  when  I  complimented 
him  on  the  pleasure  he  gave  readers  who  most  dis- 
agreed with  him,  he  seemed  to  brush  the  book  aside, 
as  something  of  an  early  indiscretion;  and  we  may 
well  suppose  that  an  author  who  has  since  become  a 
Member  of  Parliament  and  has  carried  on  successful 
guerilla  warfare  against  the  two  great  parties,  offer- 
ing alliance  first  to  one  and  then  to  the  other,  must 
now  be  able  to  appreciate  the  early  Disraelian  appeal 
to  Radicals  and  Tories  alike  to  help  him  with  all  hands 
to  oust  the  Whigs.  Bitter  as  the  early  O'Connor  in- 
dictment of  Disraeli  is,  the  book  is  indispensable.  It 
contains  matter  missing  from  all  others;  and  it  has 
the  merit  of  being  good  reading  from  beginning  to 
end.  The  book  closes  before  its  villain's  death.  All 
the  same,  it  remains,  in  a  hundred  details,  more  com- 
plete than  any  of  its  successors. 

There  is  a  story  that  Disraeli  read  Mr.  O'Connor's 
book,  complimented  him  on  it  (which  would  be  like 
him),  and  said  that  had  he  himself  written  it  he  could 
have  made  it  yet  more  damning.  That  is  one  of  the 
ininiiiici-able  similai-  stories  told  to  illustrate  the 
callous  cynicism  of  Disraeli;  there  is  a  close  version  of 
it  in  the  report  given  by  another  Irish  member  who 
made  a  speech  attacking  the  sincerity  of  the  jMinister, 

419 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

which  the  Minister  afterward  congratulated  him  upon 
in  the  Lobby,  saying  that  h^  could,  had  he  known, 
have  supplied  him  with  points  to  put  the  case 
stronger. 

The  bulky  book  which  came  jears  later  from  Mr. 
Algernon  Foggo  revives  the  Macknight  legend,  but 
misses  the  O'Connor  breeziness.  Disraeli  is  written 
of  as  an  Evangelical  street  preacher  might  have  writ- 
ten, fifty  years  ago,  of  Dr.  Pusey.  He  is  the  Devil  In- 
carnate; and  if  he  does  a  good  deed,  or  says  a  good 
thing  (Disraeli  was  always  saying  good  things,  any- 
way), there  is  the  handy  hint  at  the  appearance  of 
Lucifer  as  an  Angel  of  Light.  Do  Disraeli's  friends, 
those  at  close  quarters  with  him,  proclaim  his  recti- 
tude— they  do  but  give  their  man  away;  for  was  it 
not  written  that  Antichrist  should  deceive  the  very 
elect? 

A  book  in  defense,  agreeable  enough,  bearing  the 
title  of  Disraeli,  the  Anthor,  Orator,  and  Statesman,  was 
w^ritten  by  Mr.  John  Mill,  and  published  in  1863.  It 
was  an  anti-Macknight  manifesto,  and  it  still  reads 
with  a  swing.  From  the  grave  of  Lord  Beaconsfleld 
a  bouquet  of  biographies  at  once  arose,  friendly  if  not 
always  exhilarating.  Indeed,  they  were  ostentatious- 
ly friendly,  bulky  after  the  manner  of  memorials,  and 
"illustrated  with  permanent  photographs."  ^'An  Ap- 
preckitivc  JAfe  of  the  Ri(/ht  lion,  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfiehl, 
a  Statesman  of  Light  and  Leading:  with  Portraits  of  his 
Contemporaries,  Edited  by  Cornelius  Brown,  F.B.S.L., 
Author  of  several  Historical  and  Biographical 
Works" — so   ran   the  commemorating   tablet   of  the 

420 


LiVP:S   OF   HIM   -INFAMOUS   I.IHELS 

titk'-page  of  one  such  set  of  volumes.  There  were 
several  of  them:  mostly  monuments  of  elay-paper; 
with  embossed  baeks  of  <;reen  or  brown;  also  gilt 
edges.  The  "villa"  population  is  said  to  be  Tory;  and 
such  must  be  books  a  patent  of  resj)ectability  exposed 
upon  the  parlor  table.  Yet  take  up  even  sueh  volumes, 
and  though  you  pass  over  pages  "impatient  as  the 
wind/'  you  are  suddenly  caught  up  and  "surprised 
with  joy''  at  some  phrase  or  sentiment  of  Disraeli's 
own. 

31r.  James  Anthony  Froude's  shorter  biography, 
c«)ntributed  to  "The  Queen's  Prime  Ministers  Series," 
if  a  book  to  be  read,  does  not  present  a  very  sufficing 
nor  convincing  study,  nor  does  it  show  its  author  at 
his  high-tide  of  style.  But  it  is  a  notable  book  for  all 
that.  It  marks  a  turning-point  in  the  national  judg- 
ment— a  turning-point  long  before  reached  by  the 
Queen.  Mr.  Fronde,  who  had  been  as  the  man  in  the 
street  in  his  attitude  of  mistrust  for  Disraeli,  when 
he  came  face  to  face  with  many  a  fiction  that  had 
])assed  into  currency  as  fact,  frankly  gave  it  tlie  go- 
by; and  if  he  did  not  heartily  bless,  he  cursed  not  at 
all.  To  Sir  Theodore  ^lartin  he  confessed  that,  on 
nearer  view,  Disraeli's  features  changed;  and  it  was 
in  no  cynical  sense  that  he  put  upon  his  title-page 
the  motto: 

He  Avas  a  man  ;  takie  liiui  for  all  in  all, 
AVe  shall  not  look  upon  his  like  aj^ain. 

Also  of  a  series,  "The  Statesmen  Series,"  and  also 
valuable  is  Mr.  T.  E.  Kebbel's  volume.  Again,  in 
"The  Victorian  Era  Series,"  we  get  Mr.  TTarold  Gorst's 

421 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

The  Earl  of  BeaconsfiehL  It  is  eagerly  political,  with 
the  result  that  the  Disraeli  of  the  Library  is  merged  in 
the  Disraeli  of  the  Arena;  and  that  is  as  though  we 
saw  him  on  a  high  wall  with  the  ladder  suddenly 
taken  avraj  and  he  left  bewildered  aloft.  The  hand 
of  the  Fourth  Party — the  existence  of  which  was  one 
of  the  s^'mptoms  of  Disraeli's  withdrawal  from  the 
Treasury  Bench,  and  something  of  a  compensating 
one — is  felt  here  and  there  as  directing  the  younger 
pen,  which  is  also  a  candid  pen,  not  written  to  copy. 
Yet  no  weak  points  in  the  Disraelian  armor  are  here 
found;  and  I  have  heard  Mr.  Harold  Gorst  say  that, 
though  he  followed  hound-like  on  the  scent  indicated 
b}^  the  foes  of  Disraeli,  he  came  on  no  quarry;  hardh' 
had  he,  I  suspect,  a  decent  run.  He  said  in  effect:  I 
found  no  fault  in  the  man.  I  like  to  add  a  mention  of  a 
little  booklet — published  in  Appleton's  ^'Xew  Handy- 
Yolume  Series" — Beaconsfeld,  by  George  Makepeace 
Towle.  This  is  remarkable  because  it  was  published 
so  long  ago — in  1879 — that  Disraeli  may  himself  have 
seen  it,  and  yet  it  was  animated  by  that  spirit  of  toler- 
ance, discrimination,  and  justice,  which  other  brief 
American  biographies,  many  of  them  no  longer  than 
magazine  articles,  have  since  displayed,  in  advance 
and  in  reproach  of  England.  France,  too  has  given 
us  studies  which  show  him  well  in  perspective  at  the 
further  range. 

Also,  before  the  curtain  fell  on  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
Mr.  Francis  Hitchman's  Pithlic  Life  of  the  Earl  of  Bea- 
consfield made  its  appearance,  doing  justice  and  deal- 
ing sympathy  to  the  politician,  who  must  have  read  it 

422 


LIVES    OF   HIM    "INFAMOUS   LIBELS" 

with  ploasuiv,  and  seeu  iu  it.  au  auspice  that  the  day 
of  the  infamous  libels  was  done. 

Happy  Mr.  Hitchman!  more  happy  Mr.  W.  E. 
Henley,  envied  as  the  writer  of  understanding  notices 
of  Endymion  that  fell  under  Dizzy's  eye,  and  let  him 
see  that  the  Younger  Generation  heard  his  call.  Mr. 
Hitchman's  book  passed  through  revised  editions 
after  Disraeli's  death,  and  it  abides  as  a  useful  work 
of  historical  reference  in  the  midst  of  the  multitude 
of  recollections  and  personal  impressions  since  pub- 
lished by  various  more  or  less  friendly  hands.  Among 
these  is  that — the  most  promising  and  therefore  the 
most  disappointing — by  Sir  William  Eraser,  a  Dizzy- 
ite,  not  so  much  by  faith  as  by  the  persuasion  of  facts; 
an  old  Eton  boy  who  seemed  inclined  to  measure 
Coningshij  by  the  '^'the"  put  before  "Carfax''  ("no  Eton 
boy  would  do  that");  a  spectator  at  many  Disraelian 
feasts,  but  a  lean  recorder  of  them;  a  story-teller  who 
omits  the  story's  point,  where  mere  reference  to 
Hansard  would  have  recalled  it  to  his  mind;  a  man, 
in  short,  who  had  not  learned  from  Sir  Vavasour  that 
a  baronet  has  some  inexplicable  tendency  to  become 
a  bore.  Happily,  not  even  "the  far-off  look"  in  the 
Chief's  eye  when  his  supporter  approached  him  in  the 
Carlton  led  him  to  suspect  in  himself  the  possession 
of  that  rather  patronizing  and  commonplace  disposi- 
tion which  his  book  proclaims  aloud  to  us.  It  is  a 
medley  of  missed  opportunities.  All  Dizzyites,  how- 
ever, use  as  well  as  abuse  the  bulky  budget  of  mod- 
erately good,  rather  doubtful,  and  quite  impossible 
things  to  be  found  in  Disraeli  and  his  Dai/;  and  Sir 

423 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

William  has  therefore  his  niche  near  at  hand,  if  not 
in  the  inmost  shrine. 

Of  the  many  other  writers  of  ability  on  various 
aspects  of  Disraeli's  career  whose  contributions  have 
made  many  a  month's  magazines  interesting,  may  be 
gratefully  named  Mr.  Alfred  Austin,  Mr.  Frederick 
Greenwood,  Mr.  Saintsbur},  Mr.  James  Sykes,  Mr.  J. 
Henry  Harris  (a  storehouse  of  facts  about  Lady 
Beaconsfield),  Mr.  Bryce,  Mr.  Brewster,  Mr.  Childers, 
Mr.  Zangwill,  Mr.  Escott,  Mr.  Walter  Sichel,  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison,  and  Mr.  Frewen  Lord.  The  rough 
path  to  any  shrine  is  made  all  the  smoother  for  the 
pilgrim  of  to-day  by  the  pilgrims,  however  light- 
heeled,  of  all  the  yesterdays.  The  succeeding  writer 
(in  point  of  time)  must  give  them  gratitude  on  that; 
nor  can  he  forget  that  it  is  often  the  least,  not  the 
greatest,  who  comes  last  in  a  procession. 

In  a  note  written  from  19  Curzon  Street,  January 
20,  1881,  Lord  Beaconsfield  acknowledges  a  little 
present  made  to  him  by  Baron  Tauchnitz  at  the  time 
of  the  publication  of  Endymlou:  'The  beautiful  vase 
has  arrived,  and  quite  safely.  It  is  a  most  gracious 
and  gratifying  gift;  and  I  accept  it  in  the  full  spirit 
of  friendship  in  which  it  is  offered.  ...  I  no 
longer  dwell  in  the  house  in  Park  Lane  where  I  once 
had  the  pleasure  of  receiving  you,  but  I  am  very  near." 

Sir  William  Fraser  once  noticed  on  the  drawing- 
room  table  at  Grosvenor  Gate  a  complete  set  of  the 
Tauchnitz  edition  of  Disraeli's  works.  Presuming  on 
the  safety  which  generally  attends  any  sort  of  depre- 
ciation of  a  publisher,  Sir  William  said:     ''Does  not 

424 


TENNYSON 

that  annoy  you?"  Disraeli  (who  had  satirized  nearly 
every  class  except  the  publishers,  and  who  once 
thought  of  a  partnership  with  Moxon  for  himself)  re- 
plied: ''No;  on  the  contrary,  I  am  flattered.  The 
Baron  sent  them  to  me  himself."  Disraeli  had  the 
sense  to  perceive,  as  somebody  has  well  said,  that  the 
Baron  was  not  only  the  godfather  of  English  litera- 
ture upon  the  Continent,  but  the  inventor  of  a  formaty 
and  the  pioneer  of  international  property  in  books. 
The  German  Baron  corresponded  in  English — with 
apologies.  "Don't  be  afraid  of  your  English,"  Thack- 
eray once  reassured  him;  "a  letter  containing  £  is 
always  in  a  pretty  style." 

To  Alfred  Tennt/soji,  Poet  Laureate. 

"Bournemouth, 
"J>ecem6er  20^/*,  1874. 

"Dear    Mr.    Tennyson:     A    Government   should 

recognize    intellect.      It    elevates    and    sustains    the 

spirit  of  a  nation.     But  it  is  an  office  not 

Tennyson. 

easy  to  fulfil,  for  if  it  falls  into  favoritism 
and  the  patronage  of  mediocrity,  instead  of  raising 
the  national  sentiment  it  might  degrade  and  debase 
it.  Her  Majesty,  by  the  advice  of  her  Minister,  has 
testified  in  the  Arctic  expedition,  and  will  in  other 
forms,  her  sympathy  with  science.  But  it  is  desirable 
that  the  claims  of  high  letters  should  be  equally  ac- 
knowledged. This  is  not  so  easy  a  matter,  because 
it  is  in  the  nature  of  things  that  the  test  of  merit  can 
not  be  so  precise  in  literature  as  in  science.  Neverthe- 
less, there  are  some  living  names,  however  few,  which 
I  would  fain  believe  will  reach  posterity,  and  yours  is 
among  the  foremost.     I  should  be  glad,  therefore,  if 

425 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

agreeable  to  yourself,  to  submit  your  name  to  the 
Queen  for  the  distinction  of  a  baronetcy,  so  that,  by 
an  hereditary  honor,  there  may  always  be  a  living 
memorial  of  the  appreciation  of  your  genius  by  your 
countrymen.  Have  the  kindness  to  inform  me  of  your 
feelings  on  this  subject;  I  shall  remain  here  to  Jan- 
uary 4th,  after  that  it  will  be  best  to  direct  to  me  at 
10  Downing  Street,  Whitehall. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  remain,  dear  Mr.  Tennyson, 
faithfully  yours, 

"B.  Disraeli." 


Once  Cardinal  Lavigerie,  the  great  Central  African 
"White  Missionary,"  spoke  to  me  of  a  plan  of  evangeli- 
zation which  was  his,  but  which  Leo.  XIII.,  the  Uni- 
versal Father,  had  furthered  for  him  before  all  the 
universe.  I,  in  return,  spoke  to  the  Cardinal  of  the 
plan  as  his  own;  and  never  shall  I  forget  the  generous 
gesture  with  which  he  declared:  "No,  no;  no  longer 
mine;  it  is  not  etiquette  to  speak  of  suggesting  any- 
thing to  a  Pontiff:  what  he  adopts,  that  he  initiates." 
On  this  principle,  no  doubt,  Hallam,  Lord  Tennyson, 
in  the  biography  of  his  father,  thus  schedules  this  let- 
ter: "On  December  20th,  the  Queen,  through  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, offered  my  father  a  baronetcy."  The  initiation, 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  was  obviously  the 
Minister's.  As  Tennyson  was  still  labeled  "Liberal," 
the  offer  was  apart  from  political  purpose;  nor  was 
Disraeli's  personal  acquaintance  with  the  Laureate 
more  than  a  nominal  one.  In  some  senses,  therefore, 
the  offer  was  a  more  significant  one  than  that  which 
had  come  earlier  from  Mr.  Gladstone;  or  even  than 

420 


TENNYSON 

that  wliifh  succeeded,  in  all  senses,  when  later  Mr. 
Gladstone's  bait  (and  the  angled-for  poet)  rose  to  a 
barony.  Meanwhile,  Tennyson,  like  any  other  man 
who  is  being-  bid  for,  was  not  averse  from  a  bargain. 
He  therefore,  while  declining  for  himself,  was  willing 
to  say  "yes"  for  somebody  else.  We  are  not  given  the 
exact  terms  of  the  letter,  and  that  is  a  loss;  but  the 
upshot  was  that  Mr.  Gladstone  had  made  the  offer 
before,  that  it  had  been  declined,  but  that  the  promise 
of  it  for  the  son,  after  his  father's  death,  would  be 
gratefully  accepted.  With  this,  apparently,  went  the 
hint  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  unwilling  to  be  so 
far  obliging.  Disraeli  replied  that  such  a  course  was 
contrary  to  all  i^recedent;  and  the  poet,  accepting  the 
assurance,  owned  that  Gladstone  did  not  "pledge 
himself  to  anything  contrary  to  precedent,  as  he 
expressly  stated."  Poets,  who  may  be  smiled  at 
for  condescending  to  become  "Sirs''  and  "Lords,"  are 
difficult.  And  when  Gladstone,  (not  without  some 
sense  of  the  pricking  spur  of  Disraeli's  overture)  made 
the  offer  of  a  barony,  a  barony  w^as  accepted,  not,  we 
were  assured,  as  a  compliment  to  the  poet,  no,  not 
even  to  the  son  (who  has  since  taken  his  own  rank  and 
station  in  men's  minds,  for  that  matter),  but  as  an 
uplifting  for  Literature. 

We  smile;  not  at  the  elevation  of  a  poet,  but  rather 
At  the  hedging  and  fencing  set  about  the  acceptance 
of  it  at  too  self-conscious  Aldworth  and  Faringford. 
Disraeli  believed  that  titles  would  perish  if  they  were 
left  to  represent  only  material  wealth;  and  the  offer 
of  a  peerage  from  one  who  believed  in  the  House  of 

427 


BENJAMIX    DISRAELI 

Lords  as  a  great  constitutional  engine  may  be  held, 
I  think,  in  higher  regard  than  the  oJTer  from  another 
who  took  the  House  of  Lords  because  it  was  there, 
thought  it  a  national  burden  rather  than  a  national 
asset,  and  was  willing  to  perpetuate  a  social  caste  for 
the  gratification  of  personal  vanities — ignoble  indeed. 
In  brief,  Disraeli  did  not  confer  honors  on  genius  so 
much  as  he  conferred  genius  upon  honors.  Very 
early  in  life  Disraeli  told  the  story  of  a  visit  he  paid 
to  Munich,  which  I  choose  to  retell  here  because  it  is 
instinct  with  this  sense  of  "the  aristocracy  of  genius," 
and  of  the  elevation  which  a  great  man  confers  on  his 
age.  Most  people  (myself  among  the  number)  may 
disagree  with  Disraeli's  estimate  of  "Old  Lewis"  of 
Bavaria,  and  of  his  work  in  his  capital;  but  we  need 
not  here  confound  the  matter  of  policy  with  the 
matter  of  taste.  The  passage  occurs  in  Heath's  Book 
of  Beaut !j  (1841): 

"The  destiny  of  nations  appears  to  have  decreed 
that  a  society  should  periodically,  though  rarely^ 
flourish,  characterized  by  its  love  of  the  Fine  Arts, 
and  its  capacity  of  ideal  creation.  These  occasional 
and  brilliant  ebullitions  of  human  invention  elevate 
the  race  of  man;^  fliey  purify  and  chasten  the  taste 
of  succeeding  generations;  and  posterity  accepts 
them  as  the  standard  of  what  is  choice,  and  the  model 
of  what  is  excellent. 

"Classic  Greece  and  (Miristian  Italy  stand  out  in 

'  The  opening  phrasing  of  the  letter  to  Tennyson  seems  an  echo  of  these 
words,  written  thirty-five  years  before.  This  very  common  Disraeli  continu- 
ity of  ideas  marks  the  early  maturity  of  his  tastes ;  while  his  later  acts  re- 
deem the  pledges  implied  in  liis  earlier  words. 

428 


TENNYSON 

our  uuivei'siil  auuuls  as  the  opochs  of  the  Arts.  Dur- 
injX  the  last  two  centuries,  while  manners  have  under- 
jione  a  rapid  transition,  while  physical  civilization  has 
advanced  in  an  unprecedented  degree,  and  the  appli- 
cation of  science  to  social  life  has  diverted  the  minds 
of  men  from  other  pursuits,  the  Fine  Arts  have 
decayed  and  vanished, 

"I  wish  to  call  the  attention  of  my  countrymen  to 
another  great  movement  in  the  creative  mind  of  Eu- 
rope; one  yet  young  and  little  recognized,  but  not 
inferior,  in  my  opinion,  either  to  that  of  Athens  or 
of  Florence. 

"It  was  on  a  cloudless  day  of  the  autumn  of  last 
year,  that  I  found  myself  in  a  city  that  seemed  almost 
visibly  rising  beneath  my  eye.  The  street  in  which  I 
stood  was  of  noble  dimensions,  and  lined  on  each  side 
with  palaces  or  buildings  evidently  devoted  to  public 
]>urposes.  Few  were  completel}^  finished:  the  sculptor 
was  working  at  the  statues  that  adorned  their  fronts; 
the  painter  was  still  touching  the  external  frescoes; 
and  the  scaffold  of  the  architect  was  not  in  every  in- 
stance withdrawn.  Everywhere  was  the  hum  of  art 
and  artists.  The  Byzantine  style  of  many  of  these 
buildings  was  novel  to  me  in  its  modern  adaptation, 
yot  ver^'  effective.  The  delicate  detail  of  ornament 
contrasted  admirably  with  the  broad  fronts  and  noble 
fa^-adcs  wliicli  they  adorned.  A  church  witli  two  very 
lofty  towers  of  wliit(^  marble,  with  their  fretted  cones 
relieved  with  cerulean  blue,  gleamed  in  the  sun;  and 
near  it  was  a  pile  not  dissimilar  to  the  ducal  palace 
nt  A^Miice,  but  of  nobler  and  more  beautiful  propor- 

420 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

tions,  with  its  portal  approached  by  a  loftv  flight  of 
steps,  and  guarded  by  the  colossal  statues  of  poets 
and  philosophers — suitably  guarded,  for  it  was  the 
National  Library. 

^'As  I  advanced,  I  found  myself  in  squares  and  cir- 
cuses, in  every  instance  adorned  by  an  obelisk  of 
bronze  or  the  equestrian  statue  of  some  royal  hero. 
I  observed  a  theater  with  a  lofty  Corinthian  portico, 
and  a  pediment  brilliantly  painted  in  fresco  with  de- 
signs appropriate  to  its  purpose;  an  Ionic  museum  of 
sculpture,  worthy  to  enshrine  the  works  of  a  Phidias 
or  a  Praxiteles;  and  a  palace  for  the  painter,  of  which 
I  was  told  the  first  stone  had  been  righth'  laid  on  the 
birthday  of  Raffaelle.  But  what  struck  me  most  in 
this  city,  more  than  its  galleries,  temples,  and  palaces, 
its  magnificent  buildings,  splendid  paintings,  and  con- 
summate statues,  was  the  all-pervading  presence  and 
all-inspiring  influence  of  living  and  breathing  Art.  In 
every  street,  a  school:  the  atelier  of  the  sculptor  open, 
the  studio  of  the  painter  crowded:  devoted  pupils, 
aspiring  rivals:  enthusiasm,  emulation,  excellence. 
Here  the  long-lost  feudal  art  of  coloring  glass  redis- 
covered; there  fresco-painting  entirely  revived,  and 
on  the  grandest  scale;  while  the  ardent  researches  of 
another  man  of  genius  successfully  analyzes  the  en- 
caustic tinting  of  Herculaneum,  and  secures  the 
secret  process  for  the  triumph  of  modern  Art.  I  be- 
held a  city  such  as  I  had  mused  over  amid  the  crum- 
bling fanes  of  Pericles,  or,  aided  alike  by  memory  and 
fancy,  had  conjured  uj)  in  the  palaces  and  gardens 
of  the  Medici. 

430 


TENNYSON 

"►Siu-h  is  Miiiiicli,  a  city  Avhicli,  lialf  a  eeutury  ago, 
was  the  gross  and  corru])!  t-api(al  of  a  barbarous  and 
brutal  people.^  Baron  Keisbecli,  who  visited  Bavaria 
in  1780,  describes  the  Court  of  Munich  as  one  not  at 
all  more  advanced  than  those  of  Lisbon  and  Madrid. 
A  good-natured  prince,  fond  only  of  show  and  think- 
ing only  of  the  chase;  an  idle,  dissolute,  and  useless 
nobility;  the  nomination  to  offices  depending  on  wom- 
en and  priests;  the  aristocracy  devoted  to  play,  and 
the  remainder  of  the  inhabitants  immersed  in  scan- 
dalous debauch. 

"With  these  recollections  of  the  past,  let  us  enter 
the  palace  of  the  present  sovereign.  With  habits  of 
extreme  simplicity,  and  a  personal  expenditure  rigidly 
economical,  the  residence  of  the  King  of  Bavaria, 
when  completed,  will  be  the  most  extensive  and  the 
most  sumptuous  palace  in  the  world.  But,  then,  it  is 
not  merely  the  palace  of  a  king:  it  is  a  temple  ded- 
icated to  the  genius  of  a  nation.  The  apartments  of 
state,  painted  in  fresco  on  the  grandest  scale,  bold 
in  design,  splendid  in  color,  breathe  the  very  Teutonic 
soul.  The  subjects  are  taken  from  the  Nihelungen  Lied, 
the  Gothic  epic,  and  commemorate  all  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  heroic  Siegfried,  and  all  the  adventures 
of  the  beautiful  Brunhilde.  The  heart  of  a  German 
beats  as  lie  gazes  on  the  forms  and  scenes  of  the 
Teutonic  IJhul :  as  lie  beholds  Haghen  the  fierce,  and 

'  The  visitor  to  Municli  today  deplores,  on  the  contran-,  the  destruction 
of  tlie  Teutonic  city  and  its  transition  into  sham  Italian.  The  Renaissance 
had  its  preat  Masters ;  but  not  su(;li  were  the  painters  and  sculptors  who  con- 
trived in  Munich  tiiis  after-pop  of  the  tfreat  sixteentii-century  boom. 

431 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Dankwart  the  swift;  Volker,  the  minstrel  knight,  and 
the  beautiful  and  haughty  Brunhilda.  But  in  point 
of  harmonious  dimension  and  august  beauty,  no 
chamber  is  perhaps  more  imposing  than  the  Kaiser 
Saal,  or  Hall  of  the  Sovereigns.  It  is,  I  should  think, 
considerably  above  one  hundred  feet  in  length,  broad 
and  lofty  in  exact  proportion.  Its  roof  is  supported 
on  either  side  by  columns  of  white  marble;  the  inter- 
columniations  filled  by  colossal  statues,  of  gilded 
brass,  of  the  electors  and  kings  of  the  country.  Seat- 
ed on  his  throne,  at  the  end  of  this  imperial  chamber, 
Lewis  of  Bavaria  is  surrounded  b}^  the  solemn  majesty 
of  his  ancestors.  These  statues  are  by  Schwanthaler, 
a  sculptor  who  to  the  severe  and  classic  taste  and 
profound  sentiment  of  his  master,  Thorwaldsen, 
unites  an  exuberance  of  invention  which  has  filled 
Munich  with  the  greatest  works  since  Phidias.  Corne- 
lius, Julius  Schnorr,  and  Hess  are  the  principal 
painters  w  ho  have  covered  the  galleries,  churches,  and 
palaces  of  Munich  with  admirable  frescoes.  The  cele- 
brated Klenze  is  known  throughout  Europe  as  the 
first  of  living  architects,  and  the  favorite  of  his  sov- 
ereign when  that  sovereign  did  not  wear  a  crown; 
but  we  must  not  forget  the  name  of  Gartner,  the  arch- 
itect who  has  revived  the  Bj^zantine  style  of  building 
with  such  admirable  effect. 

"But  it  Avas  in  the  private  apartments  of  the  king 
that  I  was  peculiarly  impressed  with  the  supreme 
genius  of  Schwantlialer.  These  chambers,  eight  in 
number,  are  painted  in  encaustic,  with  subjects  from 
the  Greek  poets,  of  which  Schwanthaler  supplied  the 

432 


I.OUl)     HEACUNSl-lll.D. 
From   the  bust   bv   Sir   ICdfiar    Ucjoliiu   at    Windsor  Castle. 


TENNYSON 

designs.  The  antechambers  are  devoted  to  Orpheus 
and  Ilesiod,  and  the  ornaments  are  in  the  oldest  Greek 
style;  severely  simple;  archaic,  but  not  rude;  the  fig- 
ures of  the  friezes  in  outline,  and  without  relief.  The 
saloon  of  reception,  on  the  contrary,  is  Homeric;  and 
in  its  coloring,  design,  and  decoration,  as  brilliant,  as 
free,  and  as  flowing  as  the  genius  of  the  great  Mseo- 
niaii.  The  chamber  of  the  tlifone  is  entirely  adorned 
with  white  bas-reliefs,  raised  on  a  ground  of  dead 
gold;  the  subjects  Pindaric;  not  inferior  in  many  in- 
stances to  the  Attic  remains;  and  characterized,  at 
the  same  time,  by  a  singular  combination  of  vigor  and 
grace.  Another  saloon  is  devoted  to  ^I^schylus,  and 
the  library  to  Sophocles.  The  gay,  wild  muse  of  Aris- 
tophanes laughs  and  sings  in  his  majesty's  dressing- 
room;  while  the  king  is  lulled  to  slumber  by  the 
Sicilian  melodies  and  the  soothing  landscapes  of 
Theocritus. 

"Of  these  chambers,  I  should  say  that  they  were  a 
perfect  creation  of  Art.  The  rooms  themselves  are 
beautifully  proportioned;  the  subjects  of  their  decora- 
tions are  the  most  interesting  in  every  respect  that 
could  be  selected;  and  the  purity,  grace,  and  invention 
of  the  designs  are  only  equaled  by  their  coloring,  at 
the  same  time  the  most  brilliant  and  harmonious  that 
can  be  conceived;  and  the  rich  fancy  of  the  arabesques 
and  otlH^r  appropriate  decorations,  which  blend  with 
all  around,  and  heighten  the  effect  of  the  whole. 
Yet  they  find  no  mean  rivals  in  the  private  chambers 
of  the  queen,  decorated  in  an  analogous  style,  but  en- 
tirely devoted  to  the  poets  of  her  own  land.  The  Min- 
29  433 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

nesingers  occupy  her  first  apartments,  but  the  bril- 
liant saloon  is  worthy  of  Wieland,  whose  Oberon 
forms  its  frieze;  while  the  bedchamber  gleams  with 
the  beautiful  forms  and  pensive  incidents  of  Goethe's 
esoteric  pen.  Schiller  has  filled  the  study  with  his 
stirring  characters  and  his  vigorous  incidents.  Groups 
from  Walhusfcin  and  Wilhchn  Tell  form  the  rich  and 
unrivaled  ceiling;  while  the  fight  of  the  dragon  and 
the  founding  of  the  bell,  the  innocent  Fridolin,  the  in- 
spired maiden  of  Orleans,  breathe  in  the  compart- 
ments of  the  walls. 

"When  I  beheld  these  refined  creations,  and  re- 
called the  scenes  and  sights  of  beauty  that  had  moved 
before  me  in  my  morning's  wanderings,  I  asked  my- 
self how  Munich,  recently  so  Boeotian,  had  become  the 
capital  of  modern  Art;  and  why  a  country  of  limited 
resources,  in  a  brief  space,  and  with  such  facility  and 
completeness,  should  have  achieved  those  results 
which  had  so  long  and  utterly  eluded  the  desires  of 
the  richest  and  most  powerful  community  in  the 
world? 

"It  is  the  fashion  of  the  present  age  to  underrate 
the  influence  of  individual  character.  For  myself,  I 
have  ever  rejected  this  consolation  of  mediocrity.  I 
believe  that  everything  that  is  great  has  been  accom- 
plished by  great  men.  It  is  not  what  I  witnessed  at 
Munich,  or  know  of  its  sovereign,  that  should  make 
me  doubt  the  truth  of  my  conviction.  Munich  is  the 
creation  of  its  king,  and  Lewis  of  Bavaria  is  not  only 
a  king,  but  a  poet.  A  poet  on  a  throne  has  realized 
his  dreams." 

434 


THOMAS   CARLYLE 

Disraeli's  sayiug  that  of  Scieuee  we  may  have  an 
exactitude  of  appreciation  not  obtainable  in  the  case 
of  the  Arts  perhaps  represents  some  misi;ivini>s  about 
his  own  taste.  If  so,  that  doubt  mii;ht  in  later  years 
get  confirmation  if  he  ever  reread  this  early  sketch, 
charged,  as  it  is,  with  local  and  temporary  enthu- 
siasm. 

Disraelij  generous  in  offering  distinctions,  was 
economical  in  his  phrasing,  which  the  following  letter 
Thomas  ^^^^^   the   Teunysou   letter   repeat   in   the 

Cariyie.  gj,g^  passage.    At  the  end  of  that  passage 

we  get  Disraeli's  distinction  between  a  "great"  poet 
and  a  "real"  one. 

To  Thomas  Garlyle. 

( Confidential. )  '  'Bournemouth, 

"December  27th,  1874. 

"Sir:  A  Government  should  recognize  intellect. 
It  elevates  and  sustains  the  tone  of  a  nation.  But  it 
is  an  office  which  adequately  to  fulfil  requires  both 
courage  and  discrimination,  as  there  is  a  chance  of 
falling  into  favoritism  and  patronizing  mediocrity, 
which,  instead  of  elevating  the  national  feeling,  would 
eventually  degrade  or  debase  it.  In  recommending 
her  Majesty  to  fit  out  an  Arctic  Expedition,  and  in 
suggesting  other  measures  of  that  class,  her  Govern- 
ment have  shown  their  sympathy  with  Science;  and 
they  wish  that  the  position  of  High  Letters  should  be 
equally  acknowledged;  but  this  is  not  so  easy,  because 
it  is  in  the  necessity  of  things  that  the  test  of  merit 
can  not  be  so  precise  in  literature  as  in  science.  When 
I  consider  the  literary  world,  I  see  only  two  living 
names  which  I  would  fain  believe  will  be  remembered, 

435 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

and  they  stand  out  in  uncontested  superiority.  One 
is  that  of  a  poet — if  not  a  great  poet,  a  real  one;  the 
other  is  your  own. 

"I  have  advised  the  Queen  to  offer  to  confer  a 
baronetcy  on  Mr.  Tennyson,  and  the  same  distinction 
should  be  at  your  command  if  you  liked  it;  but  I  have 
remembered  that,  like  myself,  you  are  childless,  and 
may  not  care  for  hereditary  honors.  I  have,  there- 
fore, made  up  my  mind,  if  agreeable  to  yourself,  to 
recommend  to  her  Majesty  to  confer  on  you  the 
highest  distinction  for  merit  at  her  command,  one 
which,  I  believe,  has  never  yet  been  conferred  by  her 
except  for  direct  services  to  the  State,  and  that  is  the 
Grand  Order  of  the  Bath. 

"I  will  speak  with  frankness  on  another  point.  It 
is  not  well  that  in  the  sunset  of  your  life  you  should 
be  disturbed  by  common  cares.  I  see  no  reason  w^hy 
a  great  author  should  not  receive  from  the  nation  a 
pension,  as  well  as  a  lawyer  or  statesman.  Unfor- 
tunately, the  personal 'power  of  her  Majesty  in  this 
respect  is  limited;  but  still,  it  is  in  the  Queen's 
capacity  to  settle  on  an  individual  an  amount  equal 
to  a  good  Fellowship,  which  was  cheerfully  accepted 
and  enjoyed  by  the  great  spirit  of  Johnson  and  the 
pure  integrity  of  Southey. 

"Have  the  goodness  to  let  me  know  your  feelings 
on  these  subjects. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  remain,  sir,  your  faithful 

servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

Carlyle's  reply  betrays— nay,  openly  expresses— 
the  pleasure  which  he  had  in  receiving  the  offer — and 
in  declining  it.  "Yesterday,"  he  wrote  to  the  Prime 
Minister  from  Chelsea,  "to  my  great  surprise,  I  had 

436 


THOMAS  c  arlvlp: 

the  honor  to  receive  jour  letter  contaiuin<;-  ii  luuj^iiiti- 
eent  proposal  for  my  benefit,  which  will  be  memora- 
ble to  me  for  the  rest  of  my  life.  Allow  me  to  say  that 
the  letter,  both  in  purport  and  expression,  is  worthy 
to  be  called  magnanimous  and  noble,  that  it  is  with- 
out example  in  my  own  poor  history;  and  I  think  it  is 
unexampled,  too,  in  the  history  of  governing  persons 
toward  men  of  letters  at  the  present,  or  at  any  time; 
and  that  I  will  carefully  preserve  it  as  one  of  the 
things  precious  to  memory  and  heart.  A  real  treasure 
or  benefit  it,  independent  of  all  results  from  it." 

He  then  goes  on  to  his  refusal:  "Except  the  feel- 
ing of  your  fine  and  noble  conduct  on  this  occasion, 
which  is  a  real  and  permanent  possession,  there  can 
not  anything  be  done  that  would  not  now  be  a  sorrow 
rather  than  a  pleasure," 

To  others,  Carlyle  wrote  in  a  strain  of  equal  ela- 
tion. The  Disraeli  he  had  despised  became  by  this 
recognition  of  Carlyle  much  less  of  "a  poor  creature" 
than  he  had  been  reckoned  heretofore.  The  Minister's 
generosity  was  again  commented  upon,  as  something 
unexpected.  Had  he,  one  wonders,  imagined  that 
Disraeli  bore  a  grudge  against  him  as  the  overwhelm- 
ing victor  in  a  conquest  for  the  Lord  Rectorship  at 
Edinburgh?  The  sage  began,  it  seems,  to  conceive  of 
a  Disraeli  who  should  be  judged  by  ordinary  stand- 
ards; and  he  even  reproaches  himself  for  his  past  pos- 
sible misreadings.  This  one  case  is  typical  of  a  good 
many  more  cases  in  which  the  attitude  of  Disraeli's 
contemporaries  toward  him  underwent  a  change  on 
the  possession  of  nearer  knowledge.     To  this  revolu- 

437 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

tion  even  the  Throne  succumbed.  Colleagues  in  the 
Cabinet  needed  and  sought  this  salvation  until  thej- 
were  able  to  say  in  the  words  of  Sir  Stafford  North- 
cote:  ''Those  who  did  know  and  love  him,  loved  him 
very  much." 

Disraeli  was,  however,  difficult  enough  to  know. 
His  life  was  absorbed  by  duties  that  all  but  confined 
him  to  Parliament,  and  indeed  to  the  Front  Bench,  in 
office  or  opposition.  This  is  one  reason  why  we  get 
so  few  friendly  glimpses  of  Disraeli  in  the  memoirs  of 
his  time.  Yet  a  man  of  his  time  in  all  essentials  he 
was.  His  literary  style,  for  example,  he  inherited 
from  his  father,  with  a  flavoring  from  Voltaire,  an 
author  who  shared  with  Plato  a  supreme  influence 
over  different  periods  of  his  youth.  The  eighteenth 
century  stilts  of  daily  prose  he  did  not  cast  wholly 
away  all  his  life,  lest  his  feet  should  fail  him,  as  in- 
deed in  verse  they  did.  If  Byron  helped  him  to  a 
certain  freedom,  that  very  emancipation  brought  its 
limitations.  He  did  not  receive  Wordsworth  into  his 
heart;  from  Rossetti,  poet  or  painter,  he  had  no  real 
illumination.  The  terms  of  his  letter  are  a  denial  of 
front  rank  to  Patmore,  to  Browning,  to  Ruskin,  to 
Swinburne;  also  to  Matthew  Arnold,  who,  neverthe- 
less, said  of  Disraeli  that  he  was  the  only  statesman 
of  the  day  sensible  of  "the  spell  of  Literature."  If 
Disraeli  had  a  mission  of  reconciliation  between 
Christians  and  Jews,  and  has  left  a  Testament  not  yet 
fully  pondered  over  by  the  members  of  either  his  own 
race  or  ours,  still,  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  an  alien 
and  that  throughout  his  career  in  the  Commons  he 

438 


THOMAS    CARLYLE 

bore  a  Jewish  name  (taken  for  the  very  reason  that 
it  might  be  forever  recognized)  kept  aloof  from  him 
the  leaders  of  religious  thought.  Bishops  looked  on 
him  with  suspicion,  even  Samuel  Wilberforce,  who 
had  a  sense  of  wit,  and  was,  Disraeli  found,  "always 
good  company"  as  a  guest.  To  Evangelical  Lord 
Shaftesbury  Disraeli  w^as  as  great  an  "enigma"  as 
Isaac  D'Israeli  had  been  to  his  own  business-like 
father — a  sort  of  puppet  to  be  moved  by  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury's prayers,  or,  if  those  were  not  effectual,  a  brand 
not  plucked  from  the  burning.  High  Church  Lord 
Selborne  saw  in  him  no  more  than  "an  actor  with  a 
mask  he  never  tore  off."  Mr.  Brow^ning,  who  loved 
liberty  of  thought  and  even  tolerated  license  of  act 
in  his  companioned  outlook  from  Casa  Guidi  windows, 
had  a  sectarian  flout  for  "Beaconsfleld  the  Jew."  The 
poet  of  shrewdness  and  "detection"  was  at  least  im- 
partial in  his  detestation  of  the  Hebrews  and  the 
monks;  but  with  that  sardonic  temper  Disraeli  had 
no  affinities.  He  was  supple  enough,  if  hearsay  be 
trusted,  to  introduce  himself  to  Browning  at  an 
Academy  Banquet — one  more  illustration  of  his  tol- 
erance in  recognitions.  To  Carlj'le  himself,  Disraeli 
supplied  the  touchstone  of  tolerance;  and  the  Jew 
taunt  came  at  once  to  the  pen  that  had  been  loudest 
in  praise  of  Old  Testament  methods  under  Cromwell. 
Disraeli,  who  liad  learned  cosmopolitanism  from 
the  vicissitudes  of  his  ancestors,  and  had  it,  so  to  say, 
in  his  blood,  could  not  be  exclusive  in  his  dealings 
with  nations  or  persons.  He  would  not  hound  down 
the  Turk  in  continuance  of  an  historical  vendetta.    He 

439 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

would  not  see  Ireland,  with  his  young  eyes,  through 
English  spectacles — he  would  have  it  governed,  he 
said,  according  to  Stuart  and  not  according  to  Crom- 
wellian  traditions.  He  would  not  judge  of  Chartism 
by  its  excesses,  nor  yet  turn  on  individuals  with  de- 
rision. There  again  was  the  barrier  between  him  and 
Carlyle.  He  distrusted,  as  evidence  of  any  possession 
of  heroic  virtue,  that  easy  scorn  of  others — the  least 
pardonable  form  of  egotism — which  passed  for  wis- 
dom in  Chelsea;  and  the  Memoirs,  which  he  lived  to 
see  published,  confirmed  his  faith  in  good-nature  and 
his  doubt  of  scorn.  It  was  by  his  habit  of  even-hand- 
edness  that  he  made  Carlyle  reconsider  his  estimate 
of  Disraeli  as  "a  superlative  Hebrew  conjurer.''  Car- 
lyle wrote  on  the  "horny-handed  brother";  Disraeli 
placed  in  that  hand  a  vote;  and  Carlyle  despaired. 
The  same  note  of  callous  derision,  differently  applied 
by  Thackeray,  had  the  unique  effect  of  almost  exclud- 
ing that  author  from  the  otherwise  unlimited  charity 
of  Disraeli;  for  Universalism  itself  excludes  from  its 
scope  one  Son  of  Perdition.  Those  who  seek  and  find 
in  CodUngshu  a  cause  of  the  estrangement  have  little 
appreciation  of  either  literary  satire  or  Disraeli's 
disregard  of  it.  The  only  other  person  with  whom, 
in  the  end,  Disraeli  lost  patience — and  the  reason 
seems  intelligible — was  his  Vavasour  of  Tancred,  the 
first  Lord  Houghton. 

If  Disraeli  did  not  hail  the  theory  of  Evolution 
(which,  part  in  prophecy,  part  in  perversity,  he  had 
ridiculed  years  before  its  coming),  he  did  not  dogma- 
tize against  it  in  the  fashion  of  the  Tory  editor  of  the 

440 


THOMAS   CARLYLE 

(JiKirtcrh/,  who  said  ex  vathvdia  that  "it  was  practically 
synonymous  with  infidelity."  This  Whitwell  Elwin, 
one  recalls,  had  been  equally  unreceptive  to  Disraeli 
on  his  first  appearing,  lie  thought  the  "new  spirit'' 
synonymous  with  Kadioalism.  Confronted  with  Dar- 
win, Disraeli  ranged  himself  ''on  the  side  of  the 
angels."  In  his  own  department,  in  politics,  he  was 
a  consistent  Evolutionist  throughout.  And  he  made 
his  own  discoveries  and  inventions — he  made  his 
Queen  an  Empress;  and  from  the  agricultural  serf  he 
sought  to  evolve  the  peasant.  The  slaves  of  the  mines 
and  the  factories — some  of  them  the  young  children 
whose  "cry"  Mrs.  Browning  sent  echoing  through 
England,  till  it  was  heard  above  the  owners'  counter- 
cry  of  the  "sacred  freedom  of  contract" — he  helped 
to  free.  He  invented,  amid  laughter  that  is  echoless 
to-day,  the  "Conservative  working  man."  Together 
with  his  kindred  spirits  of  Young  England,  he  plead- 
ed, again  amid  derision  from  the  champions  of  "free- 
dom of  contract,"  for  National  Holidays,  which  be- 
came law  later,  when  some  one  had  the  wit — or  the 
understood  and  welcomed  want  of  it — to  call  them, 
not  National,  but  "Bank."  He  advocated  also,  and 
also  amid  ridicule,  those  sports  on  the  village  green 
uniting  classes,  which  have  since  made  all  England 
a  playground.  He  cried  ^anitas!  Sanitas!  ^(uiifafi!  at 
election  times — a  pioneer  indeed;  and  his  constant 
reminder,  "I  do  not  see  what  is  the  use  of  there  being 
gentlemen  unless  they  are  the  leaders  of  the  people," 
began  that  return  of  men  of  station  to  civic  duty — 
his  own  Lothair,  as  luck  had  it,  setting  the  example 

441 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

of  a  marquis  serving  as  a  maj^or.  And  when  Lord 
Rosebery  speaks  of  the  ''efificiency''  possible  if  the 
successful  ruler  of  his  own  trade  things  were  made 
ruler  over  the  nation's  great  things,  he  does  but  put 
into  words  what  Disraeli  put  into  acts  when  Mr.  W. 
H.  Smith  was  translated  to  the  Treasury  Bench. 

And  in  each  one  of  these  experiments,  justified 
by  time,  he  had  from  a  large  section  of  his  country- 
men not  only  no  encouragement,  but  not  even  the 
tribute  of  reasoned  opposition.  He  had  instead  this 
derision,  which  was  too  ignoble  to  be  called  scorn, 
this  complacent  ridicule  of  which  Carlyle  was  the 
master.  He  was  the  "superlative  Hebrew  conjurer," 
and  John  Bull  was  reviled  because  he  let  "this  Jew 
jump  upon  his  stomach."  The  humor,  like  the 
rhetoric,  of  one  generation  is  the  weariness  of  an- 
other; even  Disraeli's  rhetoric  palls.  But  the  derision 
of  one  generation  does  not  last  longer  than  its  humor 
or  its  rhetoric;  and  we  are  all  but  free  now  in  our 
public  life  and  in  our  newspapers  from  the  self- 
sufficient  ribaldry  which  held  its  sway  over  the 
greater  part  of  the  Victorian  era.  Carlyle  stood  for 
that;  Disraeli  for  tolerance,  for  understanding.  Here 
we  see  these  protagonists  face  to  face;  and  it  is  now 
Carlyle  who  seems  to  look  another  way,  in  search, 
perhaps  of  a  new  heaven,  and  a  new  earth. 


442 


BERESIORD    HOPE 

"7'o  all  to  irltont  Ihrsc  I'rcsciifs  sJutll  <-(nnc:  ihv  Rlijhl 
Honorable  Bvnjainiii  Disraeli  seiKlellt  (/reeHini/^  So  began 
BeresforJ  the  notification  that  honorary  office  had 
Hope.  been    assigned    to   a    member   of    Parlia- 

ment who  desired  to  vacate  his  seat,  as  Mr.  Beres- 
ford  Hope  did  in  1808,  when  he  left  one  con- 
stituency for  another — that  other  being  Cambridge 
University,  which  he  successfully  carried.  Ue  was 
not  a  loyal  supporter  of  Disraeli,  to  whom,  never- 
theless, as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  he  had 
to  apply  for  the  office  that  freed  him  from  the  seat 
he  already  held.  All  people  have  heard  of  these 
"Presents,"  but  few,  even  among  seasoned  Parlia- 
mentarians, have  actually  handled  them.  I  quote 
from  the  MS.  of  the  document  issued  to  Beresford 
Hope: 

"Know  ye  that  I,  the  said  Benjamin  Disraeli,  have 
constituted  and  appointed,  and  by  these  Presents  do 
constitute  and  appoint,  Alexander  J.  B.  Beresford 
Hope  to  be  Steward  and  Bailiff  of  the  Manor  of  North- 
stead,  in  the  County  of  York,  with  the  returns  of  all 
writs,  and  warrants,  and  executions  of  the  same,  in 
the  room  and  place  of  George  Poulett  Scrope,  whose 
constitution  to  the  said  offices  I  do  hereby  revoke  and 
determine,  together  with  all  wages,  fees,  allowances, 
and  other  privileges  and  preeminences  whatsoever  to 
the  said  offices  of  Steward  and  Bailiff'  belonging  or  in 
any  wise  appertaining,  with  full  power  and  authority 
to  hold  and  keep  courts,  and  to  do  all  and  every  other 
Act  and  Acts,  thing  and  things,  which  to  the  said 
offices  of  Stewanl  and  Bailiff  of  the  ^Manor  aforesaid 
do  belong  or  in  any  wise  appertain.  In  witness 
whereof"  (and  of  a  superfluous  more)  "I  have  here- 

443 


BENJAJMIN    DISRAELI 

unto  set  my  baud  aud  seal  the  12th  day  of  February 
in  the  31st  year  of  the  lieigu  of  Her  Majesty  Queen 
Victoria,  and  in  the  year  of  Our  Lord  One  Thousand 
Eight  Hundred  and  Sixty-Eight. 
''Signed  and  delivered 

in  the  presence  of 

Montagu  Corry.  "B.  Disraeli." 

Strange  were  the  relations  between  Disraeli  and 
Beresford  Hope,  a  member  of  the  (rather  disunited) 
family  of  the  Hopes  of  Amsterdam,  who  brought  their 
fortunes  (and  misfortunes)  to  London;  and  to  one  of 
whom,  Henry  Hope  of  Deepdene,  Disraeli  dedicated 
Coningshy,  conceived  in  those  Surrey  glades  which, 
close  by,  at  Boxhill,  were  to  be  the  scene  of  Mr.  George 
Meredith's  later  creations.  Alexander  Beresford 
Hope  was  of  the  group  hostile  to  his  leader;  and  that 
hostility  was  not  diminished  by  his  marriage  with 
Lady  Mildred  Cecil,  a  sister  of  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  later 
known  as  Disraeli's  colleague  and  critic-on-the-hearth, 
Lord  Cranborne  (afterward  Marquis  of  Salisbury'). 
As  the  uncle  of  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour,  the  leader  to  be, 
Beresford  Hope  has  a  certain  further  interest  for  us 
who,  knowing  what  we  now  know,  take  a  long  retro- 
spect. As  the  owner  of  the  Saturday  Review  also, 
Beresford  Hope  had  an  influence  which  Disraeli  felt 
weekly  turned  against  himself,  both  as  man  and  as 
Reformer.  The  High  Church  Movement  was  so  near 
his  heart  that  to  Gladstone,  who  often  walked  in  early 
days  from  the  Albany  to  worship  in  the  Church  of  All 
Saints,  Margaret  Street,  which  Beresford  Hope  built, 
he  gave  a  greater  trust  than  he  ever  accorded  to 

444 


.  a 
o  o 


S"  2 


"H   t;  "3  "" 


BERESIORD    HOPE 

his  own  loader.  One  famous  sparring  match — only 
"match"  is  not  the  word — that  i>assed  between  them 
ill  the  House  is  of  inevitable  quotation.  That  was 
when,  in  18G7,  Beresford  Hope  declared  that  "al- 
though a  Conservative,  he  would  never  fall  down  and 
worship  the  golden  image  set  up  in  the  deserts  of 
Arabia,"  and  that,  dissolution  or  no  dissolution,  "he, 
for  one,  would,  with  his  whole  heart  and  conscience, 
vote  against  the  Asian  Mystery."  The  uncouthness  of 
the  allusions  was  accompanied  by  an  uncouthness  of 
gesture  and  of  general  appearance — the  uncouthness 
which  seems  always  at  its  awkwardest  in  a  long- 
bearded  man.  Quite  unperturbed  was  Disraeli's  reply 
to  "his  honorable  friend,"  whose  style,  he  said,  "is  very 
ornamental  in  discussion,  and  when  he  talks  to  me 
of  Asian  Mystery  I  may  reply  to  him  by  an  allusion 
to  Batavian  grace."  The  Holland  origin  of  this  imita- 
tive brother-in-law  of  "the  master  of  taunts  and 
gibes," 'and  the  unwieldy  gestures  which,  an  hour  be- 
fore, had  accompanied  his  indictment,  made  Disraeli's 
an  instant  hit;  and  ever  since  that  day  Dutch 
courage  has  found  in  Batavian  grace  gay  company  in 
our  language.  The  great  division  which  followed 
showed  Gladstone's  amendments  to  Disraeli's  Reform 
Bill  beaten  by  twenty-one  votes. 

It  was  a  scene  of  wild  excitement,  for  it  marked 
the  triumph  of  Disraeli  over  the  foes  of  his  own 
household;  handkerchiefs  and  hats  were  waved,  salvo 
after  salvo  of  cheers  were  discharged,  on  the  princi- 
ple, long  established  in  the  Island,  that  a  noise,  and 
generally  a  discordant  one,  is  essential  to  the  con- 

445 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

summation  of  all  great  events  and  to  the  marking  of 
all  great  emotions.  The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
sat  silent,  and  would  have  sat  motionless,  but  that 
members  crowded  about  him,  shaking  him  by  the 
hand.  "The  working  of  his  face,"  said  an  eye-witness, 
"alone  showed  how  tremendous  had  been  the  strain 
of  the  last  few  hours." 

Beresford  Hope  did  not  confine  to  the  House  of 
Commons  his  expressions  of  discontent  under  Dis- 
raeli's leadership.  Four  years  earlier  Lord  John  Man- 
ners, between  whom  and  Hope  there  was  a  kinship  of 
Church  interests,  addressed  to  him,  in  a  letter  now 
before  me,  a  reproof  such  as  one  expects  and  wel- 
comes from  him  who  was  always  loyal  to  Disraeli. 
"Your  Church  Bate  speech  I  received,  read,  and  en- 
tirely disapproved  of.  The  existence  of  a  Church, 
apart  from  the  Tor}^  party,  is  a  chimera;  and  the 
hardly  disguised  attack  upon  Disraeli,  the  acknowl- 
edged leader  of  the  Tory  party  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, at  once  repels  from  you  all  who  follow  his  lead. 
I  had  hoped,  when  jou  came  forward  for  the  Uni- 
versity, that  all  such  feelings  were  forever  abandoned, 
and  that  you  had  enlisted  fairly  under  Lord  Derby's 
banner.  The  time  for  hair-splitting  and  wire-drawing 
has  passed  away;  and  unless  Churchmen  are  prepared 
to  support  the  Tory  leaders  they  must  make  up 
their  minds  to  lose  all  power  and  influence  in  public 
affairs." 

That  frank  avowal  Ylid  not  frighten  Beresford 
Hope  into  line.  Through  my  hands  have  passed  a 
number  of  letters  written  by  him  both  before  and 

44G 


BEKESIOIID   HOPE 

aftt'i'  this  date  to  a  friend  of  liis  in  Germany,  Dr. 
Keichensperger,  one  of  the  Center  leaders  in  the  Ger- 
man Keiehstag.  He  and  Beresford  Hope  were  brother 
Goths,  so  that  Cologne  Cathedral  there,  and  Sir  Gil- 
bert Seott's  bnildings  here,  were  the  themes  of  a  cor- 
respondence into  which,  however,  Disraeli  intruded 
himself  very  much  as  the  Devil  himself  was  reported 
to  have  done  in  the  matter  of  the  designs  for  the 
towers  of  Cologne.  These  letters,  dated  from  Bedge- 
bury  Park,  from  the  House  itself,  or  from  his  town 
residence  at  the  east  end  of  Counaught  Place  (no 
house,  one  thinks,  for  a  disciple  of  Pugin,  who  said 
that  a  man  could  not  pray  in  an  ill-designed  church), 
yield  extracts  which  are  worth  quotation  as  a  sort  of 
mutineer's  log-book.  After  the  change  from  a  Con- 
servative to  a  Liberal  Government  in  1859,  Beresford 
Hope  rejoices: 

"The  Liberals  being  in  power  with  only  the  nar- 
rowest majority,  will  strive  to  keep  their  places  by 
gratifying  their  opponents;  i.e.,  they  will  govern  in  a 
Conservative  sense  for  fear  the  Conservatives  should 
be  strong  enough  to  turn  them  out  if  they  took  the 
Kadical  line.  /Vr  roufra,  if  the  Conservatives  were 
in  now  with  that  reckless,  unprincipled  adventurer 
Di'sraeli  at  their  head,  they  would  not  unlikely  try  to 
keep  themselves  in  by  bidding  for  the  support  of  the 
Radicals  and  detaching  them  from  the  Whigs  and 
moderate  Liberals.  This  has  of  old  been  Disraeli's 
most  dangerous  and  pernicious  game.  Accordingly, 
every  one  believes  that  if  the  present  Government 
brings  in  a  Reform  Bill  next  session,  it  will  be  a  very 

447 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

moderate  one,  and  that,  if  Parliamentary  Reform  is 
inevitable,  it  may  be  settled  off  by  the  present  Gov- 
ernment, who  are  the  natural  party  to  do  so  as  the 
representatives  of  those  who  passed  the  last  Reform 
Bill,  and  so  an  end  be  made  of  the  question." 

In  April,  1860,  Hope  seems  to  give  Disraeli  the 
discredit  (as  he  thinks  it)  of  even  any  possible  Liberal 
Reform  Bill:  "What  I  said  to  you  in  my  last  letter 
about  the  general  Conservatism  of  public  feeling  at 
present  is  amply  shown  by  the  general  contempt  and 
dislike  which  is  manifested  on  all  sides,  even  amongst 
advanced  Liberals,  for  Lord  John  Russell's  vulgar  and 
leveling  Reform  Bill.  But  unluckily,  thanks  to  Dis- 
raeli's crooked  policy,  all  men  are  so  committed  that 
after  all  it  may  be  necessary  to  pass  the  measure, 
though  I  trust  not  without  aiueliorations  such  as  in  the 
Houses  of  Parliament  may  be  made  in  Committee 
either  of  the  Commons  or  the  Lords." 

The  question  of  Prince  Albert's  taste  is  a  delicate 
one.  But,  where  public  expression  of  opinion  was 
given  sparingly,  the  frank  private  judgment  of  Mr. 
Beresford  Hope  is  all  the  better  worth  having.  Yet 
even  into  this  bounces  the  King's  head — Disraeli  is 
at  the  bottom  of  the  mischief.  He  writes  in  the  June 
of  1863: 

"Gothic  art  had  a  victory  in  Scott  having  been 
selected  to  build  the  Albert  Memorial,  which  will,  in 
his  hands,  assume  the  form  of  a  kind  of  hahlacch'uio 
covering  the  statue  from  which  a  lofty  fleclie  will 
spring.  ...  It  was  poor  Prince  Albert's  misfor- 
tune to  get  into  the  hands  of  an  indescribable  entoiirar/e 

448 


I5ERKSFOU1)    HOPE 

(■//  ///('/  (/'(//•/.  lie  kiK'w  a  i;i'eat  deal  of  facts;  but  ho 
had  very  liltk'  taste,  and  yet  tried  to  do  things  him- 
self (he  was  always  averse  from  employing  a  regular 
architect,  and  i^referred  inferior  people,  who  licked 
his  own  notions  into  practical  shai)e).  That  clique 
found  this  out,  flattered  him  continuously,  and  so  es- 
tablished an  art  bureaucracy',  which  w'as  becoming 
even  more  oppressive  after  his  death  than  before,  be- 
cause they  had  got  the  ear  of  the  Queen  (who  has  no 
knowledge  of  such  things),  and  persuaded  her  that 
every  job  of  their  own  was  'the  lamented  Prince's 
wish.'  The  nation  was  sick  of,  and  indignant  w'ith,  this 
cli<]ue  and  their  bureaucracy,  and  they  showed  their 
feeling  by  rising  in  a  perfect  insurrection  in  the  House 
of  Commons  against  the  leaders  of  loth  sides  (for  Dis- 
raeli was  playing  courtier  and  assisting  the  Govern- 
ment). There  was  so  exciting  a  scene  that  night  as 
was  never  seen  in  the  House" — the  night  wdien  Par- 
liament refused  to  buy  the  Exhibition  building  of 
1862. 

The  success  of  Lord  Palmerston  at  the  elections 
of  18GG,  Hope  attributes,  not  to  a  national  democratic 
tendency,  but  to  the  fact  that  ''the  people  do  not  gen- 
erally trust  the  wisdom  or  discretion  of  Lord  Derby 
and  Mr.  Disraeli  (especially  the  latter)  to  lead  the 
Conservative  Party."  The  way  to  a  leadership  more 
agreeable  to  Mr.  Beresford  Hope  begins,  however,  to 
open.  ''By  the  death  of  his  eldest  brother,  my  wife's 
brother.  Lord  Robert  Cecil  has  become  Lord  Cran- 
borne,  and  heir  to  their  father,  the  Marquis  of  Salis- 
bury. This  change  of  position  from  younger  to  eldest 
30  449 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

son  will,  I  trust,  improve  bis  prospects  as  one  of  our 
most  rising  Conservative  statesmen.''  A  year  later, 
Mr.  Gladstone  (whose  rejection  at  Oxford  a  previous 
letter  described  as  a  '^'mistake'')  is  rather  given  up  as 
a  political  bad  job.  "I  mourn  over  Gladstone,  for 
whom  I  have  the  greatest  personal  regard,  but  appar- 
ently he  has  run  wild."  A  little  later  Gladstone  is 
again  alluded  to,  now  as  "a  man  of  infinite  probity 
and  genius  but  doctrinaire  and  enthusiastic — an  un- 
usual combination  of  character,  but  existing  in  him." 
As  a  set-off,  he  can  chronicle  that  "Lord  Cranborne 
has  gained  great  credit  as  Indian  Minister."  In  the 
May  of  1867,  Beresford  Hope  refers  triumphantly  to 
"the  magnificent  series  of  designs  (eleven  in  number 
and  all  Gothic)  sent  in  for  the  new  Law  Courts,"  add- 
ing, "the  best  of  these  is  undoubtedly  that  of  Burges." 
But  when  the  lover  of  architecture  possessed  his  soul 
in  peace,  it  was  otherwise  with  the  politician.  The 
Keform  Bill  of  18G7  was  before  the  House,  and  Beres- 
ford Hope  sees  enemies  on  all  sides,  what  with  "the 
rash,  romantic  enthusiasm  and  vanity  of  Gladstone 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  serpent-like  cunning  of  Dis- 
raeli on  the  other": 

"Gladstone's  bill  last  year  was  thrown  out  because 
it  was  thought  to  be  too  democratic.  Now  the  Con- 
servatives bring  forward  another  measure  which  is 
infinitely  more  democratic.  My  brother-in-law  gave 
up  the  Secretaryship  of  State  for  India  rather  than 
prostitute  his  convictions  to  the  retention  of  office." 

A  letter  from  ]Mr.  Beresford  Hope  to  Dr.  Reich- 

450 


BERESIOIU)    llOrE 

ensperger  dated  Christmas,  ISOT,  does  not  deal  much 
with  polities,  for  diirinp,'  a  short  session  "the  oppor- 
tune illness  of  31  rs.  Disraeli  saved  the  leader  from 
any  embarrassing  cross-questioning/'  Elected  mem- 
Inn-  for  the  University  of  Cambridge,  Mr.  Hope  writes 
iu  March,  1SG8: 

"Mr.  Disraeli  was  not  much  pleased  at  my  success, 
but  he  would  not  ope  nil/  oppose  me,  though  his  sym- 
pathies and  secret  influence  went  with  Mr,  Cleasby 
who  was  a  partizaii  follower  of  his,  and  not  (as  I  am) 
an  unh'pvndvut  Conservative.     .     .     . 

"No  one  can  tell,"  he  writes  in  August  that  year, 
"what  will  be  the  result  of  the  General  Election, 
though  I  believe  and  fear  it  will  give  a  very  large 
majority  to  the  Liberals.  After  Mr,  Disraeli's  deser- 
tion of  all  the  traditionary  principles  of  Conserva- 
tism, it  is  impossible  for  a  party  to  work  together 
merely  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  in  power  a  Ministry 
which  has  abandoned  the  doctrines  for  the  sake  of 
which  it  pretended  to  have  accepted  oflSce.'' 

In  September,  187(1,  we  have  the  customary  smack 
of  ]»olitics  again: 

"You  will  have  heard  that  the  country  is  in  a  state 
of  excitement  on  the  Eastern  Question,  but  I  am  sure 
the  policy  of  the  Government  will  approve  itself  to 
sensible  after-thoughts,  although  undoubtedly  the 
speeches  of  Mr.  Disraeli  were  far  from  wise  or  dig- 
nified. He  has  not  left  the  House  of  Commons  a  day 
too  soon,  for  all  through  last  session  he  was  visibly 
too  old  and  feeble  to  carry  on  effectually  the  office  (so 

451 


BENJAMIX    DISRAELI 

laborious  both  morally  and  physically)  of  Leader  of 
the  House  of  Commons." 

In  March,  1877,  ''Lord  Beaconsfleld  is  intolerable,'' 
about  the  Turks;  and  "Gladstone's  vehemence  against 
them  is  unpractical  and  vague,  and,  therefore,  in  a 
politician  a  great  blunder";  but  "happily  through  it 
all  the  conduct  of  my  brother-in-law  has  been  such  as 
to  raise  him  more  and  more  in  the  eyes  of  all  patriotic 
and  reasonable  persons.''  In  April,  1878,  he  says: 
"The  general  conviction  is  that  the  hopes  of  peace  are 
increased  by  the  firm  position  and  clear  language 
which  Salisbury  has  taken  up,  and  his  utterances  in 
his  recent  circular.  That  paper  has  excited  great 
attention,  and  all  but  universal  admiration.  He  wrote 
it  on  the  very  day  upon  which  he  accepted  office, 
currente  calamo,  and  without  even  the  assistance  of  a 
secretary,  beginning  it  at  10.30  in  the  evening  and 
finishing  it  about  4  a.m.  .  .  .  Derby  was  an  ex- 
cellent, most  valorous,  and  able  man;  but  he  had  not 
the  (■Jan  or  the  distinctive  knowledge  of  Continental 
affairs  necessary  for  the  office.  In  the  meanwhile,  the 
Administration  is  very  popular  and  the  Liberals  are 
split  up  into  factions  and  discredited.^' 

Then  in  the  memorable  August  of  that  year  (1878) : 
"My  thoughts  have  much  turned  to  Berlin  lately  while 
my  brother-in-law  was  there.  The  general  enthusiasm 
which  has  met  him  and  Lord  Bcaconsficld"'  (one  notes 
the  family  order  of  precedence)  "since  their  return  is 
a  most  remarkable  feature,  and  a  good  augury  for  the 
longer  continuance  in  power  of  the  Conservatives — 
or  Tories,  as  our  good  old  name  is.    It  has  been  noted 

452 


BKRESFOllD    HOPE 

that  theirs  was  the  tirst  iiistauce  that  tlic  Corpora- 
tion of  Loiulon  had  over  i;ivoii  its  fre(Mh)m  by  a  uiund- 
iiious  vote  for  political  services — political  as  con- 
trasted with  military.  But  what  are  we  to  say  to  the 
lost  reputations?  Gladstone,  once  so  powerful  and 
now  so  thoroughly  low  on  one  side,  in  spite  of  his  in- 
exhaustible activity  and  splendid  eloquence!  Lord 
DerbA',  too,  has  thoroughly  collapsed  since  his  cow- 
ardice drove  him  from  office,  and  since  the  scandal  of 
his  real  and  of  his  pretended  (I  am  sorr}^  to  say)  rev- 
elations of  Cabinet  secrets.  It  is  charitable  and,  I 
trust,  correct  to  suppose  some  freak  of  the  intellect 
which  has  made  him  believe  those  extravagant  as- 
sertions." 

With  Disraeli's  death,  Beresford  Hope  did  not,  I 
note,  find  Parliament  a  paradise  wholly  cleared  of 
serpents.  Gladstone's  "mismanagement  is  past  be- 
lief in  1882,  and  in  the  Home  Rule  proposals  of  1S8G 
"plays  an  inconceivable  and  disgraceful  part.''  Lord 
Salisbury,  on  the  other  hand,  has  delivered  'a  very 
able  and  statesmanlike  speech,  crushing  in  its  calm 
severity."  We  get  very  near  home  in  the  last  letter 
I  shall  quote,  when  yet  another  possible  leader  of  the 
party,  not  a  Cecil,  came  in  view.  That  letter  is  dated 
from  Hatfield  House,  Hatfield,  Herts,  January  5,  1887: 

"Lord  Randolph  Churchill  has  been  behaving  like 
a  <i(un'ui  and  not  like  a  statesman;  but  with  Mr. 
Goschen's  adherence  to  the  Government  the  loss  is 
more  than  made  good,  for  there  is  no  public  man  more 
respected  and  trusted  than  Goschen.  Lord  Salisbury 
bears  his  sorrows  and  anxieties  very  well,  and,  in  fact, 

453 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Lord  liandolph  Cliurehiirs  departure,  instead  of  be- 
ing a  loss,  is  a  great  gain  to  the  stability  of  the 
Administration." 

In  the  House  of  Commons  to-day  are  Mr,  Coningsby 
Disraeli  and  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  whose  last  words 
are  yet  to  be  spoken.  But  how  hint  at  a  righteous  po- 
litical vendetta  where  Disraeli  is  concerned,  who  never 
answered  grudge  by  grudge?  Before  me  lie  three 
of  his  letters  to  Beresford  Hope,  each  one  of  them 
conferring  a  favor  which  Beresford  Hope  in  every  in- 
stance consented  to  receive  from  those  "unprincipled" 
— those  generous — hands. '  Beresford  Hope  is  no 
more;  but  the  memory  of  Disraeli's  magnanimity 
remains.     Witness  the  following  letters: 

To  Alexander  John  Beresford  Hope,  M.P. 

"10  DowNi^'G  Street,  Whitehall, 
"3Iarc7i  19th,  1879. 

"Dear  Mr,  Hope:  I  have  the  pleasure  to  inform 
you  that,  this  afternoon,  on  my  proposal,  you  were 
elected  a  Trustee  of  the  British  Museum. 

"Yours  faithfully, 

"Beaconsfield." 

To  Alexander  J.  Beresford  Hope,  M.P. 

(Private.)  "10  Dow^riNG  Street,  AVhitehall, 

"Ju7ie  23rd,  1879. 

"Sir:  Her  Majesty  being  about  to  issue  a  Royal 
Commission  to  inquire  into  the  condition  of  the  sev- 
eral cathedral  churches  in  England  and  Wales  and 
the  Cathedral  Church  of  Christ  Church  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford,  and  into  the  duties  of  the  members 
and  ministers  thereof  and  other  matters  connected 

454 


MINISTER   AND   CARDINAL 

therewith,  aiul  whether  any  furtherlegislation  with  re- 
spect to  the  same  is  expedient,  and,  especially,  whether 
further  powers  should  be  <;raiited  for  revisin*;-,  from 
time  to  time,  the  statutes  of  the  several  capitular 
bodies,  and,  if  so,  by  what  authoritj^  and  in  what  man- 
ner such  powers  should  be  exercised;  I  should  be  glad 
if  you  would  jiermit  me  to  submit  your  name  to  the 
(^ueen  for  appointment  as  a  member  of  the  Com- 
mission. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  yours  faithfully, 

"Beacoxsfield." 

To  Alexamlcr  J.  Be  res  ford  Hope,  Esq. 

'10  Dow:viNG  Street,  Whitehall, 
''April  Idth,  1880. 

''Dear  Beresford  Hope:  It  is  with  much  pleas- 
ure that  I  have  to  acquaint  you  of  her  Majesty's 
gracious  commands  that  you  should  attend  at  Wind- 
sor to-morrow  to  be  sworn  a  member  of  her  Majesty's 
Most  Honorable  Privy  Council. 

"Sincerely  yours, 

"Beacoxsfield." 

To  CardiiKil  Maiiiiiiifi. 

"Grosvenor  Gate, 
"April  26th,  1867. 

"My  dear  Lord:  I  am  honored  and  gratified  by 
the  receipt  of  your  Grace's  Pastoral,  which  I  shall 
Minister  and  read,  especially  on  the  subject  you  men- 
Cardinai.  tion,  of  Feuiauisui,  with  still  greater  in- 

terest, since  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  becoming  ac- 
quainted with  the  writer. 

"Believe  me,  with  great  consideration,  your  faith- 
ful servant, 

"B.  Disraeli." 
455 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

The  letter  bears,  but  does  not  exhaust,  its  interest 
on  its  surface.  It  was  the  first  interchange  of  written 
courtesies  between  two  inflexible  men,  who  had  lately 
met  one  another,  partly  as  antagonists,  for  Manning 
was  still  politically,  though  not  religiously  and  not 
temperamentally,  a  Gladstonian:  the  Irish  Church 
Disestablishment  Resolutions  were  to  defeat  Disraeli 
and  to  exhilarate  Manning  in  the  following  year.  For 
the  present  Disraeli  was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
and  had  already  in  his  head  the  plan  of  a  novel  which, 
in  "out  of  office"  hours  of  the  next  two  years,  he  got 
seriously  to  work  upon  and  published  in  1870  as 
Lotliair.  In  that  book,  be  it  noted,  Fenianism  is 
treated  with  Manning's  seriousness;  the  power  of 
secret  societies  is  recognized;  and  Manning  himself  is 
introduced,  not  very  recognizably  in  any  but  outward 
features,  as  Cardinal  Grandison:  "About  the  middle 
height,  his  stature  seemed  magnified  by  the  attenua- 
tion of  his  form.  It  seemed  that  the  soul  never  had 
so  frail  and  fragile  a  tenement.  His  countenance  was 
naturally  of  an  extreme  pallor,  though  at  this  moment 
slightly  flushed.  His  cheeks  were  hollow,  and  his 
gray  ejes  seemed  sunk  into  his  clear  and  noble  brow, 
but  they  flashed  with  irresistible  penetration."  You 
get  the  penetration  without  the  flashing  eye  in  Dis- 
raeli, whose  description,  made  on  a  slight  acquaint- 
ance, was  exact  even  to  the  subtlety  of  Manning's 
height  erecting  itself  above  his  mere  inches,  a  symbol 
of  his  own  soaring  of  spirit  above  all  matter. 


456 


MINISTER   AND   CARDINAL 

"3  Whitehall,  Gardens,  S.W., 
''April  dth,  1877. 

''Dear  Lord  Cardinal:  It  was  most  courteous 
and  considerate  in  you  sending  to  me  an  authentic 
copy  of  the  allocution  of  his  Holiness,  which  I  shall 
read  Avith  interest  and  attention. 

"Believe  me,  very  faithfully  yours, 

"•Beaconsfield." 

Ten  years  had  passed  since  Cardinal  Manning  sent 
one  of  his  own  pastorals  to  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer; now  he  sent  a  Pontiff's  encyclical  to  the 
Prime  Minister.  ''Much  had  happened"  in  the  in- 
terval. Lothair  had  appeared,  with  a  personal  sketch, 
already  quoted,  that  surely  could  not  be  displeasing 
to  the  Cardinal;  but  that  ascetic  frame  had  been  per- 
versely made  the  abode  of  the  conventional  ecclesias- 
tic's spirit — the  zeal  which  compasses  drawing-rooms 
and  dinner-tables  for  a  proselyte;  the  caution  that 
degenerates  into  cunning.  But  Vaticanism  too  had 
been  sent  forth  from  the  other  tent,  and  all  those 
other  pamphlets  which  Mr.  Forster  ingenuously 
wished  his  leader  would  not  write;  and  under  this 
assault  and  battery  the  Radical  Cardinal,  who  wore 
the  red  and  was  red  at  heart,  took  cover  in  the  Con- 
servative ranks. 

(Private.)  "10  Downing  Street,  Whitehall, 

"Jammrjj  ?Mfi,  1879. 

"My  dear  Lord  Cardinal:  I  will  take  care  of 
Lady  Hackett's  case.     It  shall  be  well  considered. 

"I  regret  very  much  your  going  away,  for  I  fear 
your  visit  may  be  protracted.     I,  literally,  can  not 

457 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

leave  my  house  in  this  savage  weather;  otherwise,  I 
should  attempt  to  call  on  your  Eminence. 

"I  came  here,  a  fortnight  ago,  in  a  snow-storm,  and 
I  have  never  since  quitted  this  roof.  But  I  have  not 
been  idle,  for  I  have  held  five  Cabinets  in  a  week,  a 
feat  unprecedented  in  the  annals  of  Downing  Street. 
Sir  Robert  Peel  once  held  four,  but  they  were  not  so 
tranquil  as  these  later  ones. 

"Your  travel  is  a  great  venture  in  this  severe  sea- 
son. I  earnestly  hope  that  Rome  will  welcome  you, 
uninjured  by  the  effort. 

"Ever,  my  dear  Lord  Cardinal,  sincerely  yours, 

"Beacoxsfield.-' 

As  a  sign  of  the  growing  friendliness  between  the 
Minister  and  the  Cardinal,  and  also  as  an  evidence  of 
the  reverting  of  the  Minister's  mind  to  the  days  of 
that  predecessor  whose  greatness  he  had  brought  low, 
the  letter  is  memorable.  There  was  no  other  romance 
in  The  letter,  though  it  opens  with  the  name  of  a  lady 
and  is  addressed  to  one  who  had  credited  Cardinal 
Grandison  with  surprising  spiritual  conquests  of  the 
sex:  "The  Cardinal  was  an  entire  believer  in  female 
influence,  and  a  considerable  believer  in  his  influence 
over  females;  and  he  had  good  cause  for  his  convic- 
tions. The  catalogue  of  his  proselytes  was  numerous 
and  distinguished.  He  had  not  only  converted  a 
duchess  and  several  countesses,  but  he  had  gathered 
into  his  fold  a  real  Mary  Magdalen."  In  the  height 
of  her  beauty  and  her  fame  ''she  had  suddenly  thrown 
up  her  golden  whip  and  jingling  reins,  and  cast  her- 
self at  the  feet  of  the  Cardinal."  This  passage  offend- 
ed the  taste  of  the  Cardinal,  and  the  time  is  not  yet, 

45S 


MINISTER   AND   CARDINAL 

eveu  now,  when  it  can  be  cited  as  an  evidence  of  the 
precision  of  contemporary  fact  turned  by  Disraeli  to 
the  purposes  of  fiction. 

"10  Downing  Street, 
"July  Wth,  1879. 

"My  dear  Lord  Cardinal:  I  send  you  the 
promised  precis,  which  will,  I  hope,  assist  your  Em- 
inence in  your  communication  with  the  Propaganda, 
and  show  that  her  Majesty's  Government  is  not  liable 
to  the  charges  brought  against  them. 

''Ever  faithfully  yours, 

"Beaconsfield." 

The  pn-c'is,  referring  to  a  delicate  matter  of  ec- 
clesiastical diplomacy,  had  been  promised  in  one  of 
those  personal  interviews  which  Lord  Beaconsfleld 
put  to  good  purpose  in  Endymion. 

'"Fierce  iritJi  Faction  eren  among  the  mo-'^t  responsible.^^ 

"HUGHENDEN   MANOR, 

''December  31st,  1879. 

"My  dear  Lord  Cardinal:  Your  kind  wishes  to 
me  for  the  New  Year  touch  me  much,  and  I  recipro- 
cate them  with  a  perfect  cordiality.  In  the  dark  and 
disturbing  days  on  which  we  have  fallen,  so  fierce  with 
faction  even  among  the  most  responsible,  the  voice  of 
patriotism  from  one  so  eminent  as  yourself  will  ani- 
mate the  faltering  and  add  courage  even  to  the  brave. 
"Relieve  me,  with  deep  regard,  yours, 

"Beaconsfield." 

This  last  letter,  written  during  "the  dark  and  dis- 
turbing days"  which  preceded  that  expulsion  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield  from  official  life  which  his  death  a  year 
later  made  final,  shows  the  establishment  of  those 

4r,!) 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

cordial  relations  between  the  two  men  of  which 
further  evidence  was  to  be  given  and  received  on  the 
publication  of  Endymion: 

"They  were  speaking  of  Nigel  Penruddock,  whose 
movements  had  been  a  matter  of  much  mystery  dur- 
ing the  last  two  years.  Rumors  of  his  having  been 
received  into  the  Roman  Church  had  been  rife;  some- 
times flatly,  and  in  time  faintly,  contradicted.  Now 
the  fact  seemed  admitted,  and  it  would  appear  that 
he  was  about  to  return  to  England,  not  only  as  a 
Roman  Catholic,  but  as  a  distinguished  priest  of  the 
Church;  and,  it  was  said,  even  the  representative  of 
the  Papacy.  Nigel  was  changed.  Instead  of  that 
anxious  and  moody  look  which  formerly  marred  the 
refined  beauty  of  his  countenance,  his  glance  was 
calm  and  yet  radiant  He  was  thinner,  it  might  al- 
most be  said  emaciated,  which  seemed  to  add  height 
to  his  tall  figure.  .  .  .  All  he  spoke  of  Avas  the 
magnitude  of  his  task,  the  immense  but  inspiring 
labors  which  awaited  him,  and  his  deep  sense  of  his 
responsibility.  Nothing  but  the  divine  principle  of 
the  Church  could  sustain  him.  Instead  of  avoiding 
society,  as  was  his  wont  in  old  days,  the  Archbishop 
sought  it.  And  there  was  nothing  exclusive  in  his 
social  habits;  all  classes  and  all  creeds  and  all  condi- 
tions of  men  were  alike  interesting  to  him;  they  were 
part  of  the  community,  with  all  whose  pursuits,  and 
passions,  and  interests,  and  occupations  he  seemed 
to  sympathize;  but  respecting  which  he  had  only  one 
object— to  bring  them  back  once  more  to  that  im- 
perial fold  from  which,  in  an  hour  of  darkness  and 

400 


MINISTER   AND   CARDINAL 

distraction,  they  had  miserably  wandered.  Tlie  con- 
version of  England  was  deeply  engraven  on  the  heart 
of  rcnriuldock;  it  was  his  constant  i)iu'pose  and  his 
daily  and  nightly  prayer.  So  the  Archbishop  was 
seen  everywhere,  even  at  fashionable  assemblies.  He 
was  a  frequent  guest  at  banquets,  which  he  never 
tasted,  for  he  was  a  smiling  ascetic;  and  though  he 
seemed  to  be  preaching  or  celebrating  Mass  in  every 
part  of  the  metropolis,  organizing  schools,  establish- 
ing convents,  and  building  cathedrals,  he  could  find 
time  to  move  resolutions  at  middle-class  meetings, 
attend  learned  associations,  and  even  send  a  paper  to 
the  Royal  Society." 

To  the  nice  discrimination  of  outward  form,  in  the 
case  of  Cardinal  Grandison,  was  now  added,  in  the 
case  of  Archbishop  Penruddock,  a  tribute,  touched 
almost  tenderly,  to  his  inward  convictions,  his  recti- 
tude of  soul  as  well  as  of  body,  his  missionary  aims. 
The  Cardinal  knew  the  difference  between  this  por- 
trait and  that  in  Lothair;  and,  so  far  as  he  allowed 
himself  to  dwell  on  it,  did  so  with  gratification.  "It 
is  quite  another  story,"  was  his  admission,  made  to 
me  with  evident  pleasure. 

To  Lady  Dorothy  Nevill  (after  tJic  dvatli  of  tJic  Viscountess 
Beaconsfield). 

'•'IIUGHKNDEN  MANOR, 

"January  '31st,  1873. 
"My  di:ar  Dorothy:     I  was  grateful  to  you  for 
your  sympathy  in  my  great  affliction — the  supreme 
sorrow  of  my  life. 

"You  knew  her  well;  she  was  much  attached  to 

461 


BEXJAMIN    DISRAELI 

3'ou,  and  never  thought  or  spoke  of  jou  but  with  kind- 
ness and  pleasure. 

"Throughout  more  than  a  moiety  of  my  existence 
"A  Broken  she  was  my  inseparable  and  ever  interest- 
Spirit."  i2ig  companion.  I  can  not,  in  any  degree, 
subdue  the  anguish  of  my  heart. 

"I  leave  this,  now  my  only  home,  on  Monday  next 
for  the  scene  of  my  old  labors.  I  have  made  an  at- 
tempt to  disentangle  myself  from  them,  but  have 
failed.  I  feel  quite  incapable  of  the  duties,  but  my 
friends  will  be  indulgent  to  a  broken  spirit,  and  my 
successor  will  in  time  appear. 

"Adieu!  dear  Dorothy,  and  believe  me 

"Ever  yours,  D." 

This  dear  friend  was  a  daughter  of  the  third  Earl 
of  Orford,  and  the  author  of  a  history  of  the  Walpoles. 
Lady  Dorothy  was  a  near  neighbor  of  Disraeli's  dur- 
ing the  happiest  years  of  his  life,  when  he  occupied 
the  Grosvenor  Gate  house,  alienated  from  him  by 
Lady  Beaconsfield's  death — hence  the  allusion  to 
Hughenden  as  his  "only  home."  Miss  Meresia  Nevill, 
Lady  Dorothy's  daughter,  has  among  her  childhood's 
memories  those  of  the  statesman  who  took  her  upon 
his  knee,  little  dreaming  that  he  was  rocking  there 
the  future  ruling  lady  of  those  Leagues  of  Primroses 
which  were  to  rise  from  his  ashes. 

To  Robert,  aftericard  Earl  of  Lijtton. 

"2  Whitehall  Gardens,  S.W., 
"Nove7nber  23rd,  1875. 

"My  dear  Lytton:  Lord  Northbrook  has  resigned 
the  Viceroyalty  of  India,  for  purely  domestic  reasons, 
and  will  return  to  England  in  the  spring. 

402 


THE  LVTTON  VlCEllOYALTY  OF  INDIA 

"If  you  be  williu<jj,  I  will  submit  your  uame  to  the 
(^)u(H'n  as  his  successor.  The  critical  state  of  affairs 
The  Lytton  i"  (Vutral  Asia  demands  a  statesman, 
Viceroyalty  and  1  believe  if  you  will  a<'('e})t  this  hij^ii 
of  India.  pj^^j^^   ^^.^^^   ^^,jjj   ii;,y(^.  iju   opportunity;   not 

only  of  servini^-  your  country,  but  of  obtaining  an  en- 
during fame. 

"Yours  sincerely, 

"B.  Disraeli." 

The  sequel  of  this  brave  offer  may  be  found  in 
The  History  of  Lord  Lytton- s  Indian  Administration,  1876 
to  1880,  by  Lady  Betty  Balfour  (Longmans).  The 
writing  of  it  must  have  gratified  at  once  Disraeli  the 
Imperialist  and  Disraeli  the  man;  the  one  with  his 
dreams  of  Empire,  the  other  with  memories  of  the 
father  of  the  Viceroy-Elect — his  own  first  great 
friend.  "The  East  is  a  career,"  he  had  said  in  Tancred; 
and,  even  in  moments  of  depression  when  he  could 
write,  as  he  did  to  Lord  Malmesbury:  "These 
wretched  Colonies  will  all  be  independent,  too,  in  a 
few  years,  and  are  a  millstone  round  our  neck,"  India 
was  outside  his  moody  vision. 

To  the  Right  Hon.  W.  E.  Gladstone,  M.P. 

[August,  1879.] 

"Lord  Beaconsfield  presents  his  compliments  to 
Mr.  Trladstone,  and  he  has  the  honor  to  acknowledge 
^,  J  ,  the  receipt  of  his  letter  referring  to  some 

Gladstone.  *  " 

remarks  made  by  Lord  Beaconsfield  last 
night  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  requesting  to  be 
supplied  'with  a  list  of  offensive  epithets  applied  not 
merely  to  Lord  Beaconsfield's  measures,  but  to  his 

463 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

personal  character,  and  with  a  note  of  the  times  and 
places  at  which  they  were  used.' 

"As  this  would  require  a  search  over  a  period  of 
seven  years  and  a  half,  during  which  Mr.  Gladstone, 
to  use  his  own  expression  at  Oxford,  has  been  counter- 
working 'by  day  and  night,  week  by  week,  and  month 
by  month,'  the  purposes  of  Lord  Beaconsfleld,  his  lord- 
ship, who  is  at  this  moment  much  pressed  with  affairs, 
is  obliged  to  request  those  gentlemen  who  are  kind 
enough  to  assist  him  in  the  conduct  of  public  business 
to  undertake  the  necessary  researches,  which  proba- 
bly may  require  some  little  time;  but  that  Lord  Bea- 
consfleld, by  such  delay  in  replying  to  Mr.  Gladstone, 
may  not  appear  wanting  in  becoming  courtesy,  he 
must  observe  with  reference  to  the  Oxford  speech 
referred  to  in  the  House  of  Lords,  which  was  one  long 
invective  against  the  Government,  that  Mr.  Gladstone 
then  remarked  'that  when  he  spoke  of  the  Govern- 
ment he  meant  Lord  Beaconsfleld,  who  was  alone  re- 
sponsible, and  by  whom  the  great  name  of  England 
had  been  degraded  and  debased.' 

"In  the  same  spirit  a  few  days  back,  at  South- 
wark.  Lord  Beaconsfleld  was  charged  with  'an  act 
of  duplicity  of  which  every  Englishman  should  be 
ashamed;  an  act  of  duplicity  which  has  not  been  sur- 
passed,' and,  Mr.  Gladstone  believed,  'has  been  rarely 
equaled  in  the  history  of  nations.'  Such  an  act  must 
be  expected,  however,  from  a  Minister  who,  according 
to  Mr,  Gladstone,  had  'sold  the  Greeks.' 

"With  regard  to  the  epithet  'devilish'  which  Lord 
Beaconsfleld  used  in  the  House  of  Lords,  he  is  in- 
formed that  it  was  not  Mr.  Gladstone  at  Hawarden 
who  compared  Lord  Beaconsfleld  to  Mephistopheles, 
but  only  one  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  friends  kindly  inquir- 
ing of  Mr.  Gladstone  how  they  were  'to  get  rid  of  this 
Mephistopheles,'  and  as  ^[r.  Gladstone  proceeded  to 

4C4 


GLADSTONE 

explain  the  mode — probably  the  Birmingham  cancus 
— Lord  Boaconsficld  may  perhaps  be  excused  for  as- 
suming that  Mr.  Gladstone  sanctioned  the  propriety 
of  the  scarcely  complimentary  appellation." 

An  exchange  of  letters  between  the  two  leaders 
was  of  the  rarest  occurrence;  and  in  all  cases  Mr. 
Gladstone's  good  faith,  but  also  his  obliquity,  seems 
to  be  indicated.  The  habit  of  identifying  himself  with 
the  Deity  and  his  opponent  with  the  Devil  had  been  of 
long  growth;  and  now,  since  habit  makes  saints  un- 
conscious of  their  sanctity  and  sinners  of  their  sin, 
he  put  forth  a  challenge,  unconscious,  it  would  seem, 
of  the  bearing  of  the  words  he  had  habitually'  used. 
Red-hot  pincers  were  the  Devil-due  weapons.  The 
personal  equation,  in  matters  of  controversy,  counts 
for  much  among  combatants;  and  Gladstone  had, 
from  the  first,  formed  a  low  opinion  of  Disraeli.  There 
are  those  who  say  that  he  joined  the  Liberal  ranks 
because  he  could  not  bear  association  with  Disraeli 
in  the  Tory;  and  Lord  Derby,  as  we  know,  made  him 
the  first  offer  of  the  Exchequer,  Disraeli  putting  him- 
self aside  purposely,  and  only  accepting  what,  and 
when,  the  other  had  declined.  "Lord  Beaconsfield," 
said  Lord  George  Hamilton  after  his  leader's  death — 
an<l  the  w(»rds  are  elucidatory  here — "was  subject  to 
mucli  calumny  and  much  libel.  I  doubt  if  any  man 
evei-  lived  in  this  country  who  was  more  s^'stemat- 
ically  calumniated.  It  really  seemed  at  one  time  as 
if  there  were  a  conspiracy  to  misrepresent  everything 
he  did  and  to  misinterpret  everything  he  said.  So, 
little  by  little,  and  bv  dint  of  constant  reiteration,  an 
'''  ^        4G5 


BEXJAMIX    DISRAELI 

impression  was  formed  by  those  who  did  not  know 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  character,  objects,  and  past 
career,  utterly  at  variance  with  truth.  He  was  rep- 
resented as  a  cynical,  reckless  man,  thinking  only  of 
his  aggrandizement,  and  ready  for  that  purpose  on 
any  flimsy  pretext  to  involve  his  country  in  war.  I 
had  the  honor  of  the  most  personal  acquaintance  with 
the  late  lord,  and  I  can  say  this,  that  I  never  met  a 
kinder  man  in  his  private  capacity  or  a  more  patriotic 
man  in  his  public  capacit3^  But  it  became  a  cardinal 
point  in  the  creed  of  manj-  of  our  opponents  that 
Lord  Beaconsfield  was  the  author  of  all  evil,  that  he 
represented  all  that  was  bad  in  human  nature,  and 
that  his  rival  represented  all  that  was  good." 

Under  this  galling  system  of  aspersion,  the  habit 
of  silence  sometimes  became  too  difficult;  and  when 
Mr.  Gladstone  denounced  the  Anglo-Turkish  Conven- 
tion as  "insane,''  Lord  Beaconsfield,  over  the  board 
spread  in  honor  of  the  Berlin  conference,  labeled  him 
"a  sophistical  rhetorician  inebriated  by  the  exuber- 
ance of  his  own  verbosity  and  gifted  with  an  egotis- 
tical imagination  that  at  all  times  commanded  an 
interminable  and  inconsistent  series  of  arguments  to 
malign  his  opponents  and  justify  himself."  Another 
quotation,  this  time  from  a  speech  made  thirty  years 
earlier,  will  illustrate  the  feeling  that,  at  the  end  of 
his  life,  was  borne  in  upon  him  more  urgently  than 
ever  by  the  passionate  attacks  made  upon  proposals 
which  were  held  criminal  because  they  were  his,  but 
which  history  has  justified.  ''Now,  gentlemen,"  he 
said  to  the  electors  of  Bucks,  ''I  have  had  some  ex- 

4G6 


<1      5 


«    i:- 


GLADSTONE 

perienee  of  public  life,  aud  diiriug  that  time  I  have 
seen  a  great  deal  done  aud  more  pretended,  by  what 
are  called  'uioraT  means;  aud,  being  naturally  of  a 
thoughtful  temperameut,  1  have  been  induced  to  ana- 
lyze what  moral  means  are.  I  will  tell  you  what  I 
have  found  them  to  consist  of.  I  have  found  them 
to  consist  of  three  qualities — enormous  lying,  inex;- 
haustible  boasting,  intense  selfishness."  The  words 
uttered  in  1879  seem  only  a  graver  version  of  the 
words  uttered  in  1850;  and  they  went  at  last  to  the 
great  rival  weighted  and  pointed  with  the  approba- 
tion of  the  Sovereign.  She  did  not  conceal  her  cold- 
ness for  the  man  who  had,  in  her  opinion,  by  such 
"moral"  means  deposed  her  Favorite  Minister.  Lord 
Granville,  free  from  any  complicity  in  such  methods, 
was  put  up  in  the  House  of  Lords  to  deprecate  the 
picture  drawn  of  his  colleague.  Then  it  was  that  Lord 
Beaconsfield  repeated  his  charge  against  Gladstone 
as  the  utterer  of  epithets  which  were  offensive  per- 
sonally as  well  as  jjolitically.  The  rival  humbly  de- 
manded the  where  and  the  when.  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
reply,  now  printed,  was  supplemented  by  the  series 
of  Gladstone  extracts  breathing  passionate  moral  in- 
dignation against  the  policy  of  ''that  man,"  whom  he 
had  emerged  from  his  retirement  again  and  again  to 
denounce  and  finally  to  defeat.) 


467 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

To  Francis  George  Heath,  in  acknoniedgmoit  of  his  hook 
on  '•'■Peasant  Life  in  the  ^yest  of  England.'^ 

"HUGHEXDEN   MAX^OR, 

''December  2Wi,  1880. 

"Dear  Sir:  I  thank  ^ou  for  the  new  volume.  Your 
life  is  occupied  by  two  subjects  which  always  deeply 
Peasants  and  interest  me — the  condition  of  our  peas- 
Trees,  antrj',  and  trees. 

''Having  had  some  knowledge  of  the  West  of  Eng- 
land five-and-twenty  years  ago,  I  am  persuaded  of  the 
general  accuracy  of  your  reports,  both  of  their  pre- 
vious and  their  present  condition. 

''You  will  remember,  however,  that  the  condition 
of  the  British  peasant  has  at  all  times  much  varied 
in  different  parts  of  the  country.  Those  of  this  dis- 
trict are  well-to-do.  Their  wages  have  risen  40  per 
cent,  in  my  time,  and  their  habitations  are  wonder- 
fully improved. 

"Again,  the  agricultural  population  of  the  North 
of  England,  the  hinds  of  Northumberland  and  the 
contiguous  counties,  were  always  in  great  advance  of 
the  southern  peasantry,  and,  with  all  our  improve- 
ments, continue  so. 

"With  regard  to  your  being  informed  that  in  many 
parts  of  the  West  of  England  the  peasantry  are  now 
starving,  I  should  recommend  you  to  be  very  strict 
in  your  investigation  before  you  adopt  that  statement. 
Where  is  this?  and  how,  with  our  present  law,  could 
this  occur? 

"With  regard  to  trees,  I  passed  part  of  my  youth 
in  the  shade  of  Burnham  Beeches,  and  have  now  the 
happiness  of  living  amid  my  own  'green  retreats.'  I 
am  not  surprised  that  the  ancients  worshiped  trees. 
Lakes  and  mountains,  however  glorious  for  a  time, 
weary;  sylvan  scenery  never  palls. 

"Yours  faithfully,   Beacoxsfield." 
4GS 


PEASANTS   xVND   TREES 

Lord  Beac'oiisrtcld,  iu  his  double  rapacity  oi'  author 
and  statesuiau,  was  a  veritable  Aunt  Sally  at  whose 
head  a  multitude  of  books  was  diseharncd.  Literary 
people  liked  him  to  see  what  they  said;  political  aspi- 
rants sought  to  catch  his  eye;  aud  he  was  not  spared 
thecdogy  by  divines,  nor  law-books  by  lawyers,  whose 
merits  he  had  perhaps  some  official  means  of  recog- 
nizing. Young  men,  calling  him  ''!>Lister,"  loved 
above  all  else  that  authorship  might  bring  them  to 
place  iu  his  hands  the  writings  of  which  he  had  been 
in  some  sense  the  inspirer:  sometimes  he  recognized 
himself  at  a  glance  and  said,  with  a  smile,  that  he 
felt,  in  all  ways,  like  "a  receiver  of  stolen  goods."  In 
earlier  life  these  tributary  volumes  w^ent  mostly  un- 
acknowledged— the  effort  of  writing  unnecessary 
notes,  especially  in  hot  weather,  became  to  the  busy 
Parliament  man  the  fagot  above  a  load.  Sometimes 
he  met  the  slighted  sender,  and  was  sorry.  In  1849, 
at  a  dinner-party  at  Lord  Brougham's  ('V)ur  host  is  a 
host  in  himself"),  was  "a  young  Wellesley,  a  son  of 
Mornington,  but  as  unlike  his  father  as  imaginable, 
for  he  Avas  most  interesting,  thoughtful,  highly  cul- 
tivated, and  seemed  to  me  a  genius" — a  find  f(U'  a 
dinner-party  indeed!  But  all  was  not  to  be  smiling. 
"He  had  sent  me  a  French  book  which  he  had  written, 
and  which,  remembering  his  father's  boring  brochure, 
I  had  never  acknowhMlged;  and  T  felt  a  pang."  lie, 
who  often  liad  visited  the  virtues  of  fathers  on  their 
sons,  here  unjustly  visited  a  father's  sin  on  a  son.  In 
later  life,  authors  sending  volumes  were  not  rewarded 
even  by  that  catchword  which  is  attributed  to  his 

469 


BEXJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"Talk";  a  formal  note  from  a  secretary  was  their  por- 
tion. It  is  characteristic  that  when,  in  the  last  lonely 
year  of  his  life  at  Hughenden,  he  sent  a  personal  letter 
of  acknowledgment,  it  was  to  an  author  who  wrote  of 
sylvan  scenery  and  of  that  peasantry  which  had 
peopled  Disraeli's  earliest  dreams  of  an  England 
socially  regenerate. 

The  allusion  to  Burnham  Beeches  reminds  us  that 
in  the  autumn  of  1849  Disraeli,  having  been  at  Drop- 
more,  "could  not  resist  stealing  on  two  short  miles 
to  Burnham  Beeches,  which,"  he  tells  his  sister,  "I 
had  not  seen  for  so  many  years,  and  saw  again  under 
such  different  circumstances,  being  their  representa- 
tive.^ They  did  not  disappoint  me,  which  is  saying 
much." 

To  Lachj  Blcsshu/tou. 

"HuGHEXDEX  Manor, 
"January,  1849, 

"I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  telling  Moxon  to  send 
you  a  copy  of  the  new  edition  of  the  Curiosities  of 
In  Memoriam :  Liferatiirc,  which  I  have  just  published, 
Isaac  D'israeli.  ^^ifh  a  little  notice  of  my  father.  You 
were  always  so  kind  to  him,  and  he  entertained  such 
a  sincere  regard  for  you,  that  I  thought  you  would 
not  dislike  to  have  this  copy  on  your  shelves. 

"I  found  among  his  papers  some  verses  which  you 
sent  liim  on  his  eightieth  birthday,  which  I  mean  to 
publish  some  day,  with  his  correspondence;  but  the 
labor  now  is  too  great  for  my  jaded  life. 

"^Fy  wife  complains  very  much  that  I  broke  my 
promise  to  her,  and  did  not  bring  her  to  pay  you  a 
visit  when  we  last  passed  through  town;  but  I  was 

'  He  had  been  elected  M.P.  for  Bucks  two  years  earlier. 

470 


IN    MEMORIAM:    ISAAC   DISRAELI 

as  i^reat  a  sulTeivi*  by  that  omission  as  herself.  The 
truth  is,  1  am  always  hurried  to  deatli  ami  quite  worn 
out,  ehielly  by  statistics,  though  I  hope  the  great 
California  discovery  [of  gold],  by  revolutionizing  all 
existing  data,  will  finally  blow  up  these  impostures 
and  their  votaries  of  all  parties.^ 

"We  have  passed  the  last  six  weeks  in  moving  from 
Bradenham  to  this  place — a  terrible  affair,  especially 
for  the  library,  though  only  a  few  miles.  I  seem  to 
have  lived  in  wagons  like  a  Tartar  chief.  Would  I 
were  really  one,  but  this  is  a  life  of  trial;  and  para- 
dise, I  hope,  is  a  land  where  there  are  neither  towns 
nor  country. 

"Our  kindest  regards  to  you  all. 

This  "little  notice  of  my  father"  was  produced  at 
a  time  of  great  political  pressure,  on  the  eve  of  Dis- 
raeli's succession  to  the  leadership  of  the  Tory  Oppo- 
sition. In  May,  1848,  he  wrote  to  his  sister:  "Moxon 
has  undertaken  to  see  the  Ciniositics  through  the 
press.  Pray  remember  to  get  me  all  the  dates  as  to 
publications,  etc.,  all  details,  etc.,  in  case  I  am  ever 
destined  to  write  the  Memoir'''  (his  father  had  died  two 
months  earlier)  "I  contemplated."    Nine  months  later 

'  After  the  "Peace  witli  Honor"  Treaty  at  Berlin,  the  British  residents  in 
Caiifornia  sent  Lord  Beaconsfield  an  address  enshrined  in  a  gohlen  casket 
from  the  Golden  Gate.  In  reply  to  the  depntation  who  presented  it  he  re- 
ferred to  tlie  romance  of  the  incident.  "  Here,"  he  said,  "  is  a  body  of  Eng- 
lishmen working  in  the  El  Dorado,  the  real  El  Dorado,  they  have  discovered, 
pursuing  fascinating  and  absorbing  labors,  who  yet,  amid  all  the  excitement 
of  their  unparalleled  life,  can  still  reflect  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  much- 
loved  country  they  have  quitted  for  a  while."  Disraeli,  who  slipped  else- 
where into  the  common  confusion  between  Frankenstein  and  his  monster, 
here  similarly,  instead  of  saying  "  the  land  of  El  Dorado,"  treats  the  name 
of  the  man,  El  Dorado,  as  the  name  of  the  place. 

471 


BENJAJMIN    DISRAELI 

the  Memoir  was  born :  "The  new  edition  of  the  Curiosi- 
ties, the  first  stone  in  the  monument,  will  appear  di- 
rectly. It  is  an  expensive  book,  and  Moxon  looks 
grave.  He  likes  the  Memoir,  but  complains  that  it  is 
too  short.  I  think,  however,  he  is  wrong."  An  ex- 
cellent piece  of  work  it  is,  the  first  of  its  kind,  but  so 
good  as  to  be  scarce  improved  upon  by  the  biography 
of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  to  follow  in  four  years.  Dis- 
raeli, who  boasted  that  his  blood  was  not  inferior  to 
that  of  the  Cavendishes,  gives  a  brief  history  of  his 
family  and  of  their  sufferings  for  their  faith: 

"My  grandfather,  who  became  an  English  denizen 
in  1748,  was  an  Italian  descendant  from  one  of  those 
Hebrew  families  whom  the  Inquisition  forced  to  emi- 
grate from  the  Spanish  Peninsula  at  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  who  found  a  refuge  in  the  more 
tolerant  territories  of  the  Venetian  Republic.  His 
ancestors  had  dropped  their  Gothic  surname  on  their 
settlement  in  the  Terra  Firma,  and,  grateful  to  the 
God  of  Jacob  who  had  sustained  them  through  un- 
precedented trials  and  guarded  them  through  un- 
heard-of perils,  they  asumed  the  name  of  D'Israeli, 
a  name  never  borne  before,  or  since,  by  any  other 
family,  in  order  that  their  race  might  be  forever  recog- 
nized. Undisturbed  and  unmolested,  they  flourished 
as  merchants  for  more  than  two  centuries  under  the 
protection  of  the  lion  of  St.  Mark,  which  was  but  just, 
as  the  patron  saint  of  the  Republic  was  himself  a  child 
of  Israel.  But  toward  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  altered  circumstances  of  England,  favor- 
able, as  it  was  then  supposed,  to  commerce  and  re- 

472 


i 


IN    MEMORIAM:   ISAAC   DISRAELI 

ligioiis  liberty,  attracUHl  the  attcutiuu  of  1113'  great- 
graudfatlier  to  this  island,  and  lie  resolved  that  the 
youngest  of  his  two  sons,  Benjamin,  the  'son  of  his 
right  hand,'  should  settle  in  a  country  where  the 
dynasty  seemed  at  length  established  through  the  re- 
cent failure  of  Prince  Charles  Edward,  and  where 
public  opinion  appeared  definitely  adverse  to  persecu- 
tion on  matters  of  creed  and  conscience.  The  Jewish, 
families,  who  were  then  settled  in  England,  were  few, 
though  from  their  wealth,  and  other  circumstances, 
they  were  far  from  unimportant.  They  were  all  of 
them  Sephardim,  that  is  to  say,  children  of  Israel,  w'ho 
had  never  quitted  the  shores  of  the  Midland  Ocean, 
until  Torquemada  had  driven  them  from  their  pleas- 
ant residences  and  rich  estates  in  Aragon,  and  An- 
dalusia, and  Portugal,  to  seek  greater  blessings,  even, 
than  a  clear  atmosphere  and  a  glowing  sun,  amid  the 
marshes  of  Holland  and  the  fogs  of  Britain.  Most  of 
these  families,  who  held  themselves  aloof  from  the 
Hebrews  of  Northern  Europe,  then  only  occasionally 
stealing  into  England,  as  from  an  inferior  caste,  and 
whose  synagogue  was  reserved  only  for  Sephardim, 
are  now  extinct;  while  the  branch  of  the  great  family, 
which,  notwithstanding  their  own  sufferings  from 
prejudice,  they  had  the  hardihood  to  look  down  upon, 
have  achieved  an  amount  of  wealth  and  considera- 
tion which  the  Sephardim,  even  with  the  patronage 
of  Mr.  Pelham,  never  could  have  contemplated, 
Nevertheless,  at  the  time  when  my  grandfather  set- 
tled in  England,  and  when  Mr.  Pelham,  who  was  very 
favorable   to   the  Jews,   was  Prime   Minister,   there 

473 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

might  be  found,  among  other  Jewish  families  flourish- 
ing in  this  countr}',  the  Villa  Reals,  who  brought 
wealth  to  these  shores  almost  as  great  as  their  name, 
though  that  is  the  second  in  Portugal,  and  who  have 
twice  allied  themselves  with  the  English  aristocracy, 
the  Medinas — the  Laras,  who  were  our  kinsmen — and 
the  Mendez  da  Costas,  who,  I  believe,  still  exist." 

What  Disraeli  calls  "the  disgraceful  repeal  of 
the  bill" — as  disgraceful  in  its  way  as  the  revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes — perhaps  disappointed  the 
elder  Benjamin  and  led  to  that  alienation  even  from 
his  own  people  of  which  his  grandson  makes  a  note: 
"The  tendency  to  alienation  was  no  doubt  subse- 
quentl}^  encouraged  by  his  marriage,  which  took  place 
in  1765.  My  grandmother,  the  beautiful  daughter  of 
a  family  who  had  suffered  much  from  persecution, 
had  imbibed  that  dislike  for  her  race  w^hich  the  vain 
are  too  apt  to  adopt  when  they  find  that  they  are 
born  to  public  contempt.  The  indignant  feeling  that 
should  be  reserved  for  the  persecutor,  in  the  mortifi- 
cation of  their  disturbed  sensibility,  is  too  often  vis- 
ited on  the  victim;  and  the  cause  of  annoyance  is 
recognized,  not  in  the  ignorant  malevolence  of  the 
powerful,  but  in  the  conscientious  conviction  of  the 
innocent  sufferer.  Seventeen  j^ears,  however,  elapsed 
before  my  grandfather  entered  into  this  union,  and 
during  that  interval  he  had  not  been  idle.  He  was 
only  eighteen  when  he  commenced  his  career,  and 
when  a  great  responsibility  devolved  upon  him.  He 
was  not  unequal  to  it.  He  was  a  man  of  ardent  char- 
acter; sanguine,  courageous,  speculative,  and  fortu- 

474 


IN    MEMOKIAM:    ISAAC    DISRAELI 

uate;  with  a  teiiii)ei'  wliit-li  uo  disappointment  cuuld 
disturb,  and  a  braiu,  amid  reverses,  full  of  resource.^ 
lie  made  his  fortune  in  the  midway  of  life,  and  settled 
near  Enfield,-  where  he  formed  an  Italian  garden,  en- 
tertained his  friends,  pla3'ed  whist  with  Sir  Horace 
Mann,  who  was  his  great  acquaintance,  and  who  had 
known  his  brother  at  Venice  as  a  banker,  ate  maca- 
roni which  was  dressed  by  the  Venetian  Consul,  sang 
canzonettas,  and  notwithstanding  a  wife  who  never 
pardoned  him  for  his  name,  and  a  son  who  disap- 
pointed all  his  plans,  and  who  to  the  last  hour  of  his 
life  was  an  enigma  to  him,  lived  till  he  was  nearly 
ninety,  and  then  died  in  1817,  in  the  full  enjoyment  of 
prolonged  existence.^  My  grandfather  retired  from 
active  business  on  the  eve  of  that  great  financial 
epoch,  to  grapple  with  which  his  talents  were  w^ell 
adapted;  and  when  the  w^ars  and  loans  of  the  Revolu- 
tion were  about  to  create  those  families  of  million- 
aires, in  which  he  might  probably  have  enrolled  his 
own.  That,  however,  was  not  our  destiny.  My  grand- 
father had  only  one  child,  and  nature  had  disqualified 
him,  from  his  cradle,  for  the  busy  pursuits  of  men." 

A  Russian  loan  was  in  fact  offered  for  his  negotia- 
tion in  1815;  he  refused  it,  and  it  passed  to  the  Roths- 
childs— hence  the  allusion  to  ''those  families  of  mill- 
ionaires." Benjamin  Disraeli  the  Youngest  in  early 
life  had  a  brief  dream  of  the  political  finance  of  the 

'  lie  was  a  partner  in  a  firm  of  fruit  importers  and  liad  a  hand  in  the 
founding  of  the  Stock  Exchange. 

^  Wiien  the  house  was  pulled  down,  the  fa9ade  was  brought  to  the  South 
Kensington  Museum  as  a  fine  specimen  of  early  eighteenth-century  English 
architecture. 

'  Disraeli  here  considerably  antedates  the  year  of  his  grandfather's  death. 

475 


BENJAJNIIN    DISRAELI 

kind  his  progenitor  had  foregone,  "'In  the  winter  of 
1835,"  sa^'s  the  writer  of  an  article  of  astonishing 
Disraeli  interest  appearing  in  the  Quarterly  Review  of 
January,  1887,  ''he  was  concerned  in  some  mysterious 
financial  operation  which  he  considered  of  great  polit- 
ical importance.  'Circumstances,'  he  wrote  to  Mr, 
Austen,  'have  placed  me  behind  the  curtain  of  financial 
politics.'  What  the  precise  nature  of  this  operation 
was  we  have  been  unable  to  ascertain.  It  was  seem- 
ingly connected  with  the  issue  of  a  loan  for  a  foreign 
Power  in  Holland,  as  he  informed  Mr.  Austen  that  he 
was  in  frequent  secret  communication  with  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Dutch  Legation  in  London,  and  twice 
went  over  to  The  Hague  in  connection  with  the  affair. 
He  was  in  expectation  of  making  a  considerable  sum 
of  money  by  it,  at  a  moment  when  he  was  in  serious 
monetary  straits;  but  it  came  to  nothing,  and  we 
merely  mention  the  circumstance  as  it  affords  curious 
evidence  that,  in  his  description  of  Sidonia  in  Coniugs- 
hif,  he  had  himself  in  view  in  that  great  and  all-know- 
ing politician  and  financier,  or  that  in  Sidonia  he 
sketched  a  character  to  which  it  was  his  ambition  to 
attain.  The  purchase  by  him  in  after-3'ears,  when 
Prime  Minister,  of  the  Suez  Canal  shares,  affords  a 
striking  instance  of  his  conception  of  'financial  poli- 
tics.' "  Thus  had  the  houses  of  D'Israeli  and  Roths- 
child an  association  at  last.  Meanwhile,  the  story  of 
Isaac  D'Israeli,  no  man  of  mercenary  affairs,  though 
the  careful  steward  of  the  family  fortune  that  passed 
through  his  hands,  has  to  be  told  by  his  son: 

"A  pale,  pensive  child,  with  large  dark-brown  eyes 

476 


IN    MEMOIUAM:    ISAAC   DISRAELI 

jiiul  flowiiij;-  hair,  bad  growu  up  beiu'alh  this  roof  of 
woildly  energy  and  enjoyment,  indicating  even  in  his 
infancy,  by  tlic  whoh^  carriage  of  his  life,  that  he  was 
of  a  diiTerent  order  from  those  among  whom  he  lived. 
Timid,  suscei)tible,  lost  in  reverie,  fond  of  solitude,  or 
seeking  no  better  company  than  a  book,  the  years  had 
stolen  on,  till  he  had  arrived  at  that  mournful  period 
of  boyhood  when  eccentricities  excite  attention  and 
command  no  sympathy.  In  the  chapter  on  Predispo- 
sition, in  the  most  delightful  of  his  works,^  my  father 
has  drawn  from  his  own,  though  his  unacknowledged, 
feelings,  immortal  truths.  Then  commenced  the  age 
of  domestic  criticism.  His  mother,  not  incapable  of 
deep  affections,  but  so  mortified  by  her  social  position 
that  she  liv(^d  until  eighty  without  indulging  in  a 
tender  expression,  did  not  recognize  in  her  only  off- 
spring a  being  qualified  to  control  or  vanquish  his 
impending  fate.  His  existence  only  served  to  swell 
the  aggregate  of  many  humiliating  particulars.  It 
was  not  to  her  a  source  of  joy,  or  sympathy,  or  solace. 
She  foresaw  for  her  child  onh'  a  future  of  degrada- 
tion. Having  a  strong  clear  mind,  without  any  imagi- 
nation, she  believed  that  she  beheld  an  inevitable 
doom.  The  tart  remark  and  the  contemptuous  com- 
ment on  her  part,  elicited,  on  the  other,  all  the  irrita- 
bility of  tlie  ]»oetic  idiosyncrasy.  After  frantic  ebulli- 
tions for  which,  when  tlie  circumstances  were  ana- 
lyzed by  an  ordinary  mind,  there  seemed  no  sufficient 
cause,  my  grandfather  always  interfered  to  soothe 
with     good-temper(Ml     commonplaces,     and     promote 

'  Essay  on  the  LUerary  Chnracier^  vol.  i.  Cliap.  V. 

477 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

peace.  He  was  a  man  who  thought  that  the  only  way 
to  make  people  happy  was  to  make  them  a  present. 
He  took  it  for  granted  that  a  boy  in  a  passion  wanted 
a  toy  or  a  guinea.  At  a  later  date,  when  my  father 
ran  away  from  home,  and  after  some  wanderings  was 
brought  back,  having  been  found  lying  on  a  tomb- 
stone in  Hackney  churchyard,  he  embraced  him  and 
gave  him  a  pony. 

"In  this  state  of  affairs,  being  sent  to  school  in 
the  neighborhood  was  a  rather  agreeable  incident. 
The  school  was  kept  by  a  Scotchman,  one  Morison,  a 
good  man,  and  not  untinctured  with  scholarship,  and 
it  is  possible  that  my  father  might  have  reaped  some 
advantage  from  this  change;  but  the  school  was  too 
near  home,  and  his  mother,  though  she  tormented  his 
existence,  was  never  content  if  he  were  out  of  her 
sight.  His  delicate  health  was  an  excuse  for  convert- 
ing him,  after  a  short  interval,  into  a  day  scholar; 
then  many  days  of  attendance  were  omitted;  finally, 
the  solitarj^  walk  home  through  Mr.  Mellish's  park 
was  dangerous  to  the  sensibilities  that  too  often  ex- 
ploded when  they  encountered  on  the  arrival  at  the 
domestic  hearth  a  scene  which  did  not  harmonize  with 
the  fairy-land  of  reverie.  The  crisis  arrived  when, 
after  months  of  unusual  abstraction  and  irritability, 
my  father  produced  a  poem.  For  the  first  time  my 
grandfather  was  seriously  alarmed.  The  loss  of  one 
of  his  argosies,  uninsured,  could  not  have  filled  him 
with  more  blank  dismay.  His  idea  of  a  poet  was 
formed  from  one  of  the  prints  of  Hogarth  hanging  in 
his  room,  where  an  unfortunate  wight  in  a  garret  was 

478 


ISAAC     DISl!  AI'.l.l,    ITOC. 

Al'lci-   :i    |i(ir'r:iil    l)y    I  >niimiMiii( I . 

Engraved   in   tlio   Monthln   Mirn.r,    ]  ir.  milicr.    1790. 


IN    MEMORIAM:    ISAAC    DISRAELI 

inditiug  an  ode  to  riches,  while  diinued  for  his  milk- 
score.  Decisive  measures  were  required  to  eradicate 
this  evil,  aud  to  prevent  future  disgrace — so,  as  seems 
the  custom  when  a  person  is  in  a  scrape,  it  was  re- 
solved that  my  father  should  be  sent  abroad,  where 
a  new  scene  and  a  new  language  might  divert  his 
mind  from  the  ignominious  pursuit  which  so  fatally 
attracted  him.  The  unhappy  poet  was  consigned  like 
a  bale  of  goods  to  my  grandfather's  correspondent  at 
Amsterdam,  who  had  instructions  to  place  him  at 
some  collegium  of  repute  in  that  city.  Here  were 
passed  some  years  not  without  profit,  though  his  tutor 
was  a  great  impostor,  very  neglectful  of  his  pupils, 
and  both  unable  and  disinclined  to  guide  them  in 
severe  studies.  This  preceptor  was  a  man  of  letters, 
though  a  wretched  writer,  with  a  good  library,  and 
a  spirit  inflamed  with  all  the  philosophy  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  then  (1780-1)  about  to  bring  forth 
and  bear  its  long  matured  fruits.  The  intelligence 
and  disposition  of  my  father  attracted  his  attention, 
and  rather  interested  him.  lie  taught  his  charge 
little,  for  he  was  himself  generallj'  occupied  in  writing 
bad  odes,  but  he  gave  him  free  warren  in  his  library, 
and  before  his  pupil  was  fifteen,  he  had  read  the  works 
of  Voltaire  and  had  dipped  into  Bayle.  Strange  that 
the  characteristics  of  a  writer  so  born  and  brought 
up,  should  have  been  so  essentially  English;  not 
merely  from  his  mastery  over  our  language,  but  from 
his  keen  and  profound  sympath}^  with  all  that  con- 
cerned the  literary  and  political  history  of  our  coun- 
try at  its  most  important  epoch. 

479 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

"When  be  was  eighteen  he  returned  to  England  a 
disciple  of  Rousseau.  He  had  exercised  his  imagina- 
tion during  the  voyage  in  idealizing  the  interview  with 
his  mother,  which  was  to  be  conducted  on  both  sides 
with  sublime  pathos.  His  other  parent  had  frequent- 
ly visited  him  during  his  absence.  He  was  prepared 
to  throw  himself  on  his  mother's  bosom,  to  bedew  her 
hand  with  his  tears,  and  to  stop  her  own  with  his  lips; 
but,  when  he  entered,  his  strange  appearance,  his 
gaunt  figure,  his  excited  manners,  his  long  hair,  and 
his  unfashionable  costume,  only  filled  her  with  a 
sentiment  of  tender  aversion;  she  broke  into  derisive 
laughter,  and  noticing  his  intolerable  garments,  she 
reluctantly  lent  him  her  cheek.  Whereupon  Eniile, 
of  course,  went  into  heroics,  wept,  sobbed,  and,  finally 
shut  up  in  his  chamber,  composed  an  impassioned 
epistle.  My  grandfather,  to  soothe  him,  dwelt  on  the 
united  solicitude  of  his  parents  for  his  welfare,  and 
broke  to  him  their  intention,  if  it  were  agreeable  to 
him,  to  place  him  in  the  establishment  of  a  great 
merchant  of  Bordeaux.  My  father  replied  that  he  had 
written  a  poem  of  considerable  length,  which  he 
wished  to  publish,  against  Commerce,  which  was  the 
corrupter  of  man.  In  eight-and-forty  hours  confusion 
again  reigned  in  this  household,  and  all  from  a 
want  of  ps3chological  perception  in  its  master  and 
mistress. 

"Mj  father,  who  had  lost  the  timidity  of  his  child- 
hood, who,  by  nature,  was  very  impulsive,  and  indeed 
endowed  with  a  degree  of  volatility  which  is  only  wit- 
nessed in  the  South  of  France,  and  which  never  de- 

480 


IN    ME.MORIAM:    ISAAC    DISRAELI 

serted  bim  lu  bis  last  bour,  was  no  longer  to  be 
eontrolled.  His  conduct  was  decisive.  He  enclosed 
bis  poem  to  Dr.  Jobnson,  witb  an  impassioned  state- 
ment of  bis  case,  complaining,  wbicb  be  ever  did,  tbat 
be  bad  never  found  a  counselor  or  literary  friend. 
He  left  bis  packet  bimself  at  Bolt  Court,  wbere  be 
was  received  by  Mr.  Francis  Barber,  tbe  doctor's  well- 
known  black  servant,  and  told  to  call  again  in  a  week. 
Be  sure  tbat  be  was  very  punctual;  but  tbe  packet 
was  returned  to  bim  unopened,  witb  a  message  tbat 
tbe  illustrious  doctor  was  too  ill  to  read  anytbing. 
Tbe  unbappy  and  obscure  aspirant,  wbo  received  tbis 
disbeartening  message,  accepted  it,  in  bis  utter 
despondency,  as  a  mecbanical  excuse.  But,  alas!  tbe 
cause  was  too  true;  and  a  few  weeks  after,  on  tbat 
bed,  beside  wbicb  tbe  voice  of  Mr.  Burke  faltered  and 
tbe  tender  spirit  of  Bennett  Langton  was  ever  vig- 
ilant, tbe  great  soul  of  Jobnson  quitted  eartb. 

"But  tbe  spirit  of  self-confidence,  tbe  resolutiou 
to  struggle  against  bis  fate,  tbe  paramount  desire  to 
find  some  sympatbizing  sage — some  guide,  pbiloso- 
pber,  and  friend — was  so  strong  and  rooted  in  my 
fatber  tbat  I  observed  a  few  Aveeks  ago,  in  a  magazine, 
an  original  letter,  written  by  bim  about  tbis  time  to 
Dr.  Vicesimus  Knox,  full  of  bigb-flown  sentiments, 
reading  indeed  like  a  romance  of  Scudery,  and  en- 
treating tbe  learned  critic  to  receive  bim  in  bis  family, 
and  give  bim  tbe  advantage  of  bis  wisdom,  bis  taste, 
and  bis  erudition. 

"Witb  a  bome  tbat  ougbt  to  bave  been  bappy,  sur- 
rounded witb  more  tban  comfort,  witb  tbe  most  good- 
33  481 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

natured  father  in  the  world,  and  an  agreeable  man, 
and  with  a  mother  whose  strong  intellect,  under  ordi- 
nary circumstances,  might  have  been  of  great  impor- 
tance to  him,  my  father,  though  himself  of  a  very  sweet 
disposition,  was  most  unhappy.  His  parents  looked 
upon  him  as  moonstruck,  while  he  himself,  whatever 
his  aspiration,  was  conscious  that  he  had  done 
nothing  to  justify  the  eccentricity  of  his  course,  or  the 
violation  of  all  prudential  considerations  in  which  he 
daily  indulged.  In  these  perplexities,  the  usual  al- 
ternative was  again  had  recourse  to — absence;  he 
was  sent  abroad,  to  travel  in  France,  which  the  peace 
then  permitted,  visit  some  friends,  see  Paris,  and  then 
proceed  to  Bordeaux  if  he  felt  inclined.  My  father 
traveled  in  France  and  then  proceeded  to  Paris, 
where  he  remained  till  the  eve  of  great  events  in  that 
capital.  This  was  a  visit  recollected  with  satisfac- 
tion. He  lived  with  learned  men  and  moved  in  vast 
libraries,  and  returned  in  the  earlier  part  of  178S,  with 
some  little  knowledge  of  life,  and  with  a  considerable 
quantity  of  books." 

The  wa3^  of  Isaac  D'Israeli  soon  became  plain;  Pye, 
the  Poet  Laureate,  visited  the  paternal  house  at  En- 
field and  persuaded  a  reluctant  father  to  allow  his 
son  to  follow  his  own  bent.  The  honorable  making 
and  keeping  of  that  bargain  between  father  and  son 
was  all-essential  to  the  career  of  Benjamin  Disraeli, 
who  profited  by  his  father's  position  to  a  degree  that 
only  he  himself  realized.  His  father — one  of  the  first 
members  of  the  Athena'um  Club — knew  all  the  lit- 
erary men  of  the  day;  he  familiarized  the  public  ear 

482 


d<^ 


yroiu   III.'  ilrawiiiK  t)V   D.   Maclisc,    H.A. 


IN    MEMORIAJSI:    ISAAC   DISRAELI 

with  the  alien  name;  and,  if  he  excited  the  wialli  of  a 
Bolton  Corney  by  what  appeared  a  too  <j;reat  com- 
placency— if  lie  bad  on  a  very  few  occasions  the  ill- 
hick  to  pull  out  a  ])lum  with  Jack-Horner-like  ad- 
vertisement of  his  own  discovery,  there  can  be  no 
(jnestion  about  the  excellence  of  those  Curio.ntics  of 
Literature  which  still  arouse  the  curiosity  of  the 
reader,  instruct  him,  entertain  him,  even  if  they  do 
not  transport  him  into  Bulwer's  tribute  to  the  "style." 
How  utterh'  Disraeli  the  Younger  realized  his  debt 
is  known  to  all  onlookers.  The  Home  Jjcttcr^  are  full 
of  it.  When  he  has  got  only  so  far  as  Falmouth  on 
his  journey  abroad  in  1830,  he  begins  to  send  back 
messages  that  must  have  given  Bradeuham,  and  the 
Man  of  Letters  laboriously  at  work  there,  a  very 
happy  half-hour,  A  Mr.  Cornish  is  met  at  Falmouth 
who  has  already  an  American  edition  of  Yivian  Grey : 
"but  this  is  nothing,"  he  adds,  racing  on  to  the  real 
thing:  "He  has  every  one  of  my  father's  works,  ex- 
cept James-  and  Charles,  interleaved  and  full  of  MS. 
notes,  and  very  literary  ones.  He  has  even  the  Bowles 
and  Byron  controversy  all  bound  up  with  the  review, 
and  a  MS.  note  to  prove  that  D'Israeli  was  the  author 
of  the  review  from  parallel  passages  from  the  Quar- 
rels, etc.  He  literally  knows  my  father's  works  hji- 
liiart,  and  thinks  our  revered  sire  the  greatest  man' 
I  hat  ev(M'  lived.  He  says  that  Byron  got  all  his  lit- 
erature from  Padre,  and  adduces  instances  which 
have  even  escaped  us.  You  never  met  such  an  en- 
thusiastic votary.  I  really  wish  my  father  could  send 
him  a  book.     Unfortunately  he  has  even  the  last  edi- 

483 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

tion  of  the  Literary  Character:  he  has  three  or  four 
editions  of  the  Curiosities,  and  among  them  the  first. 
I  told  him  that  when  I  wrote  home  I  should  mention 
him."  Disraeli  adds,  with  a  delightful  sensation  of 
linking  himself  with  his  father:  "Really  these  ardent 
admirers  of  the  united  genius  of  the  family  should  be 
encouraged."  From  Gibraltar  he  reports  that  the 
libraries  are  stocked  with  his  father's  works.  At  Se- 
ville, Brackenbury,  the  English  Consul  (and  ''the 
father  of  the  six  Miss  Brackenburys,  equally  pretty"), 
describes  Disraeli  the  Younger  as  "the  son  of  the 
greatest  author  in  England";  and  the  news  bounds 
to  Bradenham. 

So,  too,  from  Alexandria  he  reports  that  "Mr. 
Briggs,  the  great  Egyptian  merchant,  has  written 
from  England  to  say  that  great  attention  is  to  be 
paid  me,  because  I  am  the  son  of  the  celebrated 
author."  From  Granada  the  delightful  and  abundant 
fruit  is  reported:  "I  only  wish  I  had  my  beloved  sire 
here  over  a  medley  of  grape  and  melon  and  prickly- 
pear."  Spanish  cookery  takes  the  traveler's  mind 
back  to  Bradenham;  for  the  olio  is  italicized  as  the 
most  agreeable  of  dishes,  and  "my  father  would  de- 
light in  it";  while  a  recipe  is  sent  for  a  preparation  of 
tomato,  "with  which  I  think  my  father  would  be 
charmed."  At  Alexandria  an  admirable  Oriental 
dinner  "would  have  delighted  my  father — rice,  spices, 
pistachio  nuts,  perfumed  rofis,  and  dazzling  confec- 
tionery." He  awaits  news  of  his  father,  whose  letters, 
he  says,  "contribute  greatly  to  my  happiness" — hap- 
piness even  in  lazaretto  at  Malta.    It  was  during  this 

484 


IN    MEMORIAiM:    ISAAC    DISRAELI 

joiiriH'v  thai  Dizzy  met  (Jiovaiini  Battistu  Falcici-i, 
Clay's  valet — "sucli  a  valet!"  "Byron  died  in  his  aims 
and  bis  mustaehios  touch  the  earth."  "Such  a  valet" 
had,  of  course,  to  be  secured  for  Bradenham,  whither 
Tita  as  he  was  called,  went,  remaining.*  till  Isaac  D'ls- 
raeli's  death  in  1848;  and  then,  at  Benjamin's  instance, 
got  a  messengership  in  the  India  Office. 

Corfu  must  have  gained  a  new  interest  for  Isaac 
D'Israeli,  for  it  was  thence  that  his  son  wrote  to  him 
not  only  as  "My  dearest  Father,"  but  also  as  "My 
dearest  Friend."  A  cool  review  of  Isaac  D'Israeli 
rouses  the  son:  "I  saw  Lingard's  cold-blooded  hand 
at  work  in  the  J/o////////": — an  attribution  which  sug- 
gests that  the  mingled  haughtiness  and  frivolity  of 
Isaac  D'Israeli's  habitual  allusions  to  the  Church  of 
Rome — so  unlike  his  son's — had  nettled  the  historian, 
himself  of  a  particularly  liberal  turn  of  mind.  The 
return  of  health  to  the  traveler  is  announced  from 
Cairo  in  filial  fashion — the  father  is  linked  with  the 
son  in  the  record  of  the  son's  recovery: 

"How  I  long  to  be  with  him,  dearest  of  men,  flash- 
ing our  quills  together  and  opening  their  minds, 
'standing  together  in  our  chivalry,'  which  we  will  do 
now  that  I  have  got  the  use  of  my  brain  for  the  first 
time  in  my  life." 

Meanwhile  he  gives  his  father  such  cooperation  as 
praise  supplies.  A  favorite  puppy  at  Bradenham 
dies,  and  his  master  writes: 

I\rax,  true  descendant  of  Newfoundland  race, 
Where  once  he  sported  finds  his  burial-place. 
Vast  limbed,  his  step  resounding?  as  he  walked, 
The  playful  puppy  like  a  lion  stalked. 
485 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Domestic  friend,  companion  of  all  hours, 
Our  vacant  terraces  and  silent  bowers 
No  more  repeat  thy  name;  and  by  this  urn 
Not  to  love  dogs  too  well  we  sadly  learn. 

These  are  the  best  eight  lines  in  a  poem  of  double  the 
number;  and  they  are  fondled  by  the  absent  son: 

^'The  death  of  Max,"  he  writes,  ''has  cut  me  to  the 
heart.  The  epitaph  is  charming  and  worthy  of  the 
better  days  of  our  poetry.  Its  classical  simplicity,  its 
highly  artificial  finish  (I  mean  of  style),  and  fine 
natural  burst  of  feeling  at  the  end  are  remarkable, 
and  what  I  believe  no  writer  of  the  day  could  produce. 
It  is  worthy  of  the  best  things  in  the  Anthology.  It 
is  like  an  inscription  by  Sophocles  translated  by 
Pope." 

If  Isaac  D'Israeli's  early  verses  failed  to  get  appre- 
ciation from  his  father,  not  so  his  later  verses  from 
his  son. 

The  common  courtesies  of  life  were  not  abrogated 
by  the  attachment  between  father  and  child.  The 
younger  man  always  remembers  he  is  a  guest,  as  well 
as  an  eldest  son  and  heir,  at  Bradenham.  When  he 
proposes  to  bring  Bulwer  down,  he  adds:  "I  am 
anxious  that  he  and  my  father  should  be  better  ac- 
quainted." If  he  reads  a  book  with  pleasure,  he 
wishes  at  once  to  share  it:  "My  father  should  read 
Chateaubriand."  Then,  when  he  met  Beckford, 
though  Beckford  was  full  of  Contarini  Fleming,  what 
Benjamin  lays  stress  on  is  Beckford's  praise  for 
Isaac's  Persian  romance,  Mcjnoun  and  Leila.  Disraeli 
did  not  use  the  word  "educate"  with  studied  effect 

486 


^•%^. 


IN    MEMOllIAM:    ISAAC   DISRAELI 

only  ill  the  Edinburgh  speech  and  of  the  Tory  party: 
'*!Stran^iit(>rd  is  odncating  his  second  daughter  himself, 
and  they  read  the  CKriosifics  ever^'  morning.''  Lord 
Strangford,  another  time,  is  reported  as  being  "very 
hot  against  Corney,"  whose  criticisms  had  upset  for 
the  moment  the  plum-cart  of  the  elder  D'Israeli.  Good 
points  against  Corney  about  Camoens  and  Cervantes 
are  promised  "to  the  governor" — Disraeli  was  in  his 
central  thirties  when  he  used  the  schoolboy  phrase. 
A  French  littcratviir,  M.  le  Kiou  (almost  the  first  per- 
son to  discuss  "the  Oxford  Tracts"  with  Disraeli),  is 
labeled  for  Bradenham  as  "anxious  to  know  my 
father";  and  Sir  Kobert  Inglis,  met  at  Peel's  dinner- 
table,  has  his  character  determined  by  his  requesting 
"permission  to  ask  after  uij  father."  When  blindness 
and  other  infirmities  came  to  Isaac  D'Israeli,  the  son 
had  a  constant  anxiety. 

"Your  letter,''  he  wrote  in  1830  to  his  sister, 
"would  have  made  me  very  happy  had  it  brought  more 
satisfactory  tidings  of  m^^  father.  I  had  persuaded 
myself  from  your  account  that  the  enfeebled  vision 
arose  merely  from  bodily  health,  sedentary  habits, 
etc.  We  are  very  uneasy  and  unhappy  about  him,  and 
we  would  take  great  care  of  him  if  he  would  come  up 
for  advice." 

The  "we"  marks  that  bond  of  sympathy  and  affec- 
tion between  ^Mary  Anne  Disraeli  and  the  family  of 
her  husband,  which  has  at  Hughenden  its  recording 
monument  of  stone. 


487 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 


To  the  Marchioness  of  Ely. 

{Confidential.)  "Hughexden  Manor, 

"  September  Ath,  1879. 

"Dearest  Friend  :  I  must  thank  you  at  once  for 
your  kind  and  considerate  letter,  worthy  of  your  un- 
"I  Love  the  failing  friendship,  which  has  often  been 
Queen."  fQ  mg  ^  cousolation.     I  am  grieved,  and 

greatly,  that  anything  I  should  say,  or  do,  should  be 
displeasing  to  her  Majest3^ 

''I  love  the  Queen — perhaps  the  only  person  in  this 
world  left  to  me  that  I  do  love;  and  therefore  you  can 
understand  how  much  it  worries  and  disquiets  me 
when  there  is  a  cloud  between  us.  It  is  very  foolish 
on  my  part,  but  ni}'  heart,  unfortunately,  has  not 
withered  like  my  frame,  and  when  it  is  affected,  I  am 
as  harassed  as  I  was  fifty  years  ago. 

"I  received  the  Queen's  letter  yesterday,  and 
wrote  to  her  Majesty  last  night.  I  wish  to  see  the 
Queen  Dictatress  of  Europe:  many  things  are  prepar- 
ing which  for  the  sake  of  peace  and  civilization  render 
it  most  necessar^^  that  her  Majesty  should  occupy 
that  position.  This  unhappy  African  war  has  much 
interfered  with  my  plans,  and  therefore  some  sense 
of  annoyance  on  my  part  may  be  understood  and  per- 
haps pardoned. 

"You  are  kind  to  ask  after  my  health,  and  I  am 
glad  to  give  you  the  most  satisfactory  bulletin.  No 
doubt  the  extreme  regularity  of  my  life  tends  to  that 
happy  result,  but,  like  the  King  of  Spain,  I  have 
sought  charm  and  consolation  among  the  pine  forests 
of  Arcachon — i.e.,  in  plain  prose,  I  place  on  my  table 
when  I  retire  to  rest  a  vase  of  the  resin  of  those  mag- 
ical trees,  and  they  have  relieved  me  now  from  all  my 
foes:  fell  asthma  and  exhausting  bronchitis.    It  is  like 

488 


^anor. 


/ 


t/^'<^'i^t'^  ^^€jZ.-^<».,.'/^      ^S^^^LO-y^ 


480 


^  ct^t^t^    r/^<jct^^f-^  ^    ^^> 


^^*'-^*-e/     .       ^     '/"  ^^_o^-e.</=v-^^-<! — ;^'^<^ 


490 


A 


491 


«'^— ^fc-*C4^ 


/ 


492 


/flartar. 


493 


r 


494 


495 


h^jt^  ^^  ^6tt»<^  Q^x*..;^ 


496 


-1    LOVE   THE   QUEEN" 

the  balsam  wliith  the  daiiu's  of  chivalry  couferred  on 
sutt'erino-  knights — but,  happily,  you  have  neither  to 

touch  nor  taste  it. 

"Yours  affeetionateh', 

^'Beaconsfield." 

Lord  Beaconsfield,  when  he  wrote  this  letter,  did 
not  know  that  Sir  Louis  Cavagnari  and  the  other 
members  of  his  ^lission  were  lying  murdered  in  the 
British  Residency  at  Cabul.  Neither  the  Queen  nor 
Disraeli  heard  the  dire  news  till  two  days  later.  The 
South  African  war  which  had  disconcerted  him  was 
thus  followed  by  a  complication  yet  more  inimical 
to  his  plan  for  making  his  Sovereign  the  dictatress 
of  Europe — a  figure  of  speech  for  leading  lady  of 
Christendom,  as,  despite  all  ill-luck,  she  undoubtedly 
was.  The  Berlin  Congress  of  a  few  months  earlier 
was  still  fresh  in  his  mind;  the  Garter  had  followed 
and  the  speech  in  which  the  Minister  described  him- 
self and  his  colleagues  as  "English  gentlemen  hon- 
ored by  the  favor  of  their  Sovereign"  and  Gladstone 
as  a  "sophistical  rhetorician  inebriated  with  the  ex- 
uberance of  his  own  verbosity  and  gifted  with  an  ego- 
tistical imagination  that  can  at  all  times  command 
an  interminable  and  inconsistent  series  of  arguments 
to  malign  an  opponent  and  to  glorify  himself."  No 
doubt  this  letter,  as  near  a  love-letter  as  circum- 
stances permitted,  and  only  possible,  even  so,  because 
addressed  to  a  third  person,  was  intended  for  the 
Queen's  eye.  That,  at  any  rate,  was  Lady  Ely's  opin- 
ion.   A  telegram  summoned  him  to  Windsor  and  the 

little  cloud  of  trouble   between  the  Queen  and  her 
33  497 


J(' 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

Favorite  Minister  melted  away.  Such  misunder- 
standings of  a  moment  had  crossed  their  paths  be- 
fore— to  i^ass  as  quickly.  Disraeli's  first  conception 
of  the  Royal  Titles  Bill,  for  instance,  a  little  alarmed 
the  future  Empress  of  India.  She  hesitated  at  the 
introductory  hint  of  Disraeli,  who  nevertheless  was 
generally  considered  "out  of  doors"  to  be  merely  the 
catspaw  of  the  Court,  the  "subservient  Minister"  once 
again. 

Queen  Victoria's  reputation  as  a  judge  of  men  and 
as  a  woman  of  affairs  must  stand  or  fall  with  the 
-T-u   r\       '      fame  of  Disraeli.    The  alliance  was  close 

1  he  Queen  s 

Favorite  and  it  was  long  enduring.    It  was  based, 

Minister.  -i       ci  •       i  j. 

on  the  Sovereign  s  part,  on  no  preposses- 
sions. On  the  contrary,  she,  more  than  most,  had  to 
overcome  prejudices  against  the  alien,  against  the 
trespasser  upon  the  enclosure  of  British  politics, 
against  the  fiction-writer's  appearance  upon  the  stage 
of  fact.  The  Prince  Consort's  dislike  for  him  was  an- 
other bar  to  his  approach  to  the  Queen;  and  the 
Court's  conversion  to  the  Repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws, 
together  with  its  adhesion  to  the  popular  reverence 
for  Peel,  produced  something  approaching  a  feeling 
of  positive  dislike  for  the  stripling  David  who  with 
a  rude  sling  of  speech  brought  low  the  Goliath  of  the 
Philistines.  Little  did  the  Queen  imagine  in  those 
days  that  Disraeli  was  to  be  more  to  her  than  Peel: 
more  to  her  than  even  Melbourne,  that  very  fine 
British  gentleman  to  whom  she  brought  the  affection- 
ate homage  which  the  young  girl  yields  to  the  most 
accomplished  man   of  the  world   among  her  senior 

498 


THE   QUEEN'S   FAVORITE   MINISTER 

friends;  that  he  was  to  rauk,  not  merely  as  lier  i'rime 
Minister,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term,  but  as  the 
Prime  Minister  among  all  the  Ministers  of  her  long 
reign. 

If,  when  she  discovered  Disraeli,  Queen  Victoria 
had  long  said  good-by  to  the  last  of  girlhood's  illu- 
sions, he  himself  brought  to  the  association  a  romance 
which  finds  expression  at  the  very  end  of  his  life  in 
the  letter  to  Lady  Ely,  already  quoted.  It  had  found 
early  expression  when,  as  a  stranger,  he  wrote  of  her 
in  his  novels.  Their  careers  began  together;  Dis- 
raeli's in  the  Commons,  hers  upon  the  throne.  Lord 
Lyndhurst,  the  last  of  the  beaux  to  sit  on  the  wool- 
sack, gave  Disraeli,  then  on  the  eve  of  his  own  entry 
to  Parliament,  an  account  of  the  Queen's  first  Council 
which  is  preserved  in  the  familiar  passage  in  Sybil  : 

''In  a  palace  in  a  garden:  meet  scene  for  innocence 
and  youth  and  beauty,  came  the  voice  that  told  the 
maiden  she  must  ascend  the  throne.  The  Council  of 
England  is  summoned  for  the  first  time  within  her 
bowers.  There  are  assembled  the  prelates  and  cap- 
tains and  chief  men  of  her  realm;  the  priests  of  the 
religion  that  consoles,  the  heroes  of  the  sword  that 
has  conquered,  the  votaries  of  the  craft  that  has  de- 
cided the  fate  of  empires;  men  gray  with  thought,  and 
fame,  and  age;  who  are  the  stewards  of  divine  mys- 
teries, who  have  encountered  in  battle  the  hosts  of 
Europe,  who  have  toiled  in  secret  cabinets,  who  have 
struggled  in  the  less  merciful  strife  of  aspiring  sen- 
ates; men,  too,  some  of  them,  lords  of  a  thousand 
vassals  and  chief  proprietors  of  provinces,  yet  not 

499 


BENJAMIX    DISRAELI 

one  of  them  whose  heart  does  not  at  this  moment 
tremble  as  he  awaits  the  first  presence  of  the  maiden 
who  must  now  ascend  her  throne.  A  hum  of  half-sup- 
pressed conversation  which  would  attempt  to  conceal 
the  excitement  which  some  of  the  greatest  of  them 
have  since  acknowledged,  fills  that  brilliant  assem- 
blage; that  sea  of  plumes,  and  glittering  stars,  and 
gorgeous  dresses.  Hush!  the  portals  open.  She 
comes!  The  silence  is  as  deep  as  that  of  a  noontide 
forest.  Attended  for  a  moment  by  her  Royal  mother 
and  the  ladies  of  her  Court,  who  bow  and  then  retire, 
Victoria  ascends  her  throne;  a  girl,  alone,  and  for  the 
first  time,  amid  an  assemblage  of  men.  In  a  sweet 
and  thrilling  voice,  and  with  a  composed  mien  which 
indicates  rather  the  absorbing  sense  of  august  duty 
than  an  absence  of  emotion,  the  Queen  announces  her 
accession  to  the  throne  of  her  ancestors,  and  her  hum- 
ble hoj^e  that  divine  providence  will  guard  over  the 
fulfilment  of  her  lofty  trust.  The  prelates  and  cap- 
tains and  chief  men  of  her  realm  then  advance  to  the 
throne,  and  kneeling  before  her,  pledge  their  troth, 
and  take  the  sacred  oath  of  allegiance  and  supremacy 
— allegiance  to  one  who  rules  over  the  land  that  the 
great  Macedonian  could  not  conquer;  and  over  a  con- 
tinent of  which  even  Columbus  never  dreamed :  to  the 
Queen  of  every  sea,  and  of  nations  in  every  zone.  It 
is  not  of  these  that  I  would  speak;  but  of  a  nation 
nearer  her  footstool,  which  at  this  moment  looks  to 
her  with  anxiety,  with  affection,  perhaps  with  hope. 
Fair  and  serene,  she  has  the  blood  and  beauty  of  the 
Saxon.     Will  it  be  her  proud  destiny  at  length  to 

500 


THE   QUEEN'S    FAVORITE   MINISTER 

bear  relief  to  suffering  millions,  and  Avitli  that  soft 
hand  which  niiiiht  inspire  troubiadours  and  guerdon 
knights,  break  the  last  links  in  the  chain  of  Saxon 
thraldom?" 

That  passage,  which  gives  Queen  Victoria  her  large 
place,  came  to  her  at  the  time  of  its  publication,  dis- 
counted by  its  setting;  for  tlie  Chartists  were  no  more 
to  her  than  merely  "wanton  and  worthless  men."  But 
in  later  years  she  reread  it,  and  with  emotion.  Dis- 
raeli, with  his  gift  of  intuitive  logic,  had  seen,  per- 
haps more  clearly  than  she  did,  the  significance  of  a 
woman's  reign.  Caroline,  the  mill-hand  in  ^ijhU,  has 
it  in  her  heart  when  she  says:  "It's  fine  news  for  a 
summer's  day  to  say  we  can't  understand  politics  with 
a  Queen  on  the  throne!"  And  when  he  put  "The 
Young  Queen  and  the  Old  Constitution"  into  the 
mouth  of  the  Tadpoles  and  Tapers  as  an  election  cry, 
he  did  not  merely-  show  his  talent  in  burlesque,  but 
proved  also  his  ability  to  read  and  to  render  the  note 
of  a  nation's  masculinity. 

Queen  Victoria  had  the  praises  of  a  long  line  of 
Prime  ^linisters:  and  they  had  hers  in  full  return. 
Readers  of  her  letters  know  what  tributes  of  grateful 
affection  she  paid  to  Melbourne,  Peel,  Aberdeen, 
Palmerston,  Wellington,  Russell,  and  Derby  while 
they  lived  and  when  they  were  dead.  The  dislikes', 
and  distrusts  with  which  she  had  once  regarded,  say,. 
Palmerston's  free  hand  in  foreign  policy,  were  for- 
gotten by  her  in  her  memory  of  general  service.  But 
her  demonstrations — the  word  is  not  too  emphatic — 
in  favor  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  were  of  a  different  sort. 

501 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

They  came  from  the  Queen,  and  they  came  perhaps 
from  the  woman;  so  that  Mr.  Sidney  Lee  does  not 
exaggerate  when  he  declares  that  ''no  Sovereign  in 
the  course  of  English  history  has  given  equal  proof 
of  attachment  to  a  Minister." 

Yet  Queen  Victoria's  earlier  distresses  about  her 
Ministers  had  been  largely  of  Disraeli's  causing.  The 
defeat  of  Peel  after  Repeal  in  the  summer  of  1846 — 
Disraeli's  doing  more  than  any  other  single  man's — 
brought  her  Majesty  "a  very  hard  day."  She  says: 
^'I  had  to  part  from  Sir  Eobert  Peel  and  Lord  Aber- 
deen, who  are  irreparable  losses  to  us  and  to  the 
country.  The}'  were  both  so  much  overcome  that  it 
quite  upset  me.  We  have  in  them  two  devoted  friends. 
We  felt  so  safe  with  them,  and  I  can  not  tell  you  how 
sad  I  am  to  lose  Aberdeen;  you  can  not  think  what  a 
delightful  companion  he  was.  The  breaking-up  of  all 
this  intercourse  during  our  journeys  is  deplorable." 
It  is  characteristic  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  that  when  the 
Queen  offered  to  see  him  "any  day,"  he  drew  back, 
thinking  that  such  a  display  of  favor  and  familiarity 
might  provoke  hostile  criticism.  Disraeli's  method 
and  Peel's  were  here  also  at  issue;  for  Disraeli's  plea, 
even  from  his  pre-Parliamentary  days,  had  been  for 
the  open  revival  of  the  influence  of  the  first  mem- 
ber of  the  threefold  constitutional  alliance  of  King, 
Lords,  and  Commons.  When  Lord  Melbourne  died, 
the  Queen  recurred  to  the  days  of  a  close  and  even 
romantic  early  friendship  in  terms  that  are  primarily 
retrospective  and  official:  "Truly  and  sincerely  do  I 
deplore  the  loss  of  one  who  was  a  most  disinterested 

502 


THE   QUEEN'S   FAVORITE   MINISTER 

friend  of  miue,  and  most  siiuori'lj  attathod  to  me. 
He  was  indeed,  for  tlie  first  two  years  and  a  half  of 
my  reign,  almost  the  only  friend  I  had,  and  I  used  to 
see  him  coilstantly — daily."  She  adds:  "I  thought 
much  and  talked  mueh  of  him  all  day" — a  phrase 
pregnant  of  limitations.  When  she  heard  that  her 
last  letter  to  her  old  friend  had  been  "a  great  com- 
fort and  a  great  relief  to  him,  and  that  during  the 
last  melancholy  years  of  his  life  we  had  often  been 
the  means  of  cheering  him  up,"  she  adds:  ''This  is  a 
great  satisfaction  for  me  to  hear."  The  "we"  is  in 
evidence.  There  was  the  solitary  "I"  when  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  was  lost.  The  armor  that  intimate  compan- 
ionship offers  against  the  assaults  of  Time  was  in 
ISSl  no  longer  hers. 

In  Disraeli's  letters  to  his  sister  are  hints  of  his 
attitude  to  the  Queen  and  to  Prince  Albert,  discover- 
ing him  in  his  familiar  capacity  of  the  friendly  ob- 
server and  common-sense  judge  of  persons  much  less 
graciously  inclined  toward  himself.  Those  who  re- 
member Queen  Victoria  only  by  the  later  years  of  her 
reign  may  well  find  it  difficult  to  realize  the  distrust 
and  the  derision  with  which  she  was  very  openly  re- 
garded by  large  bodies  of  the  people  during  its  earlier 
stages.  She  was  not  smart  enough  for  one  set;  an- 
other lamented  her  absence  of  taste  in  the  arts;  the 
Prince  Consort  was  tolerated  (he  was  not  even  that 
by  some  of  the  Queen's  nearest  relations)  rather  than 
approved;  while  the  freedom  of  his  religious  opinions 
alienated  the  sympathies  of  the  yearly  growing  multi- 
tude that  was  taking  part  in  the  Catholic  revival.    His 

503 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

influence  over  the  Queen  was  openly  deplored  by  High 
Churchmen;  nor  could  pious  adherents  of  the  Evan- 
gelical party  be  pleased.  "He  is  everywhere  reported 
to  be  liberally  disposed/'  wrote  Lord  Ashley  (after- 
ward "the  good"  Lord  Shaftesbury);  "such  is  the  pre- 
liminary humbug  to  his  acceptance  with  the  nation." 
Too  much  of  a  cosmoi)olitan  to  share  these  views,  Dis- 
raeli did  not  grudge  the  Prince  the  hand  of  the  Queen 
— "remarkably  sweet  and  soft,"  he  reports  of  it  on 
the  authority  of  Lyndhurst,  fresh  from  the  first  Privy 
Council;  the  hand  he  was  himself  to  kiss  in  the  years 
to  come;  the  hand,  too,  that  was  to  write  with  emo- 
tion the  most  poignant  of  epitaphs  for  his  tomb. 
When  the  Commons  rushed  into  the  House  of  Lords 
for  Victoria's  opening  of  her  first  Parliament,  "the 
Queen  looked  admirably"  is  Disraeli's  record;  and, 
again,  at  the  Coronation:  "The  Queen  looked  very 
well,  and  performed  her  part  with  great  grace  and 
completeness." 

In  the  February  of  1840  Disraeli  had  his  first 
glance  at  the  future  Prince  Consort:  "He  is  very 
good-looking,"  in  the  report.  When  members  of  Par- 
liament went  with  a  marriage  address  to  the  Eoyal 
pair  at  Buckingham  Palace,  Disraeli  repeated  the 
compliment:  "The  Queen  looked  well;  the  Prince,  on 
her  left,  very  handsome."  Twelve  years  later,  after 
an  interval  in  which  Disraeli  had  been  ignored  by 
the  Court,  he  came,  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
at  close  quarters  with  Prince  Albert.  Writing  on 
June  8,  1852,  he  says:  "On  Sunday  I  was  two  hours 
with   the   Prince — a   very   gracious   and   interesting 

504 


THE  qlep:n's  favorite  .minister 

audiente.  lie  lias  great  abilities  and  wonderful 
knowledge — I  think  the  best  educated  man  1  ever  met, 
most  completely  trained/andnot  over-educated  for  his 
intellect,  which  is  energetic  and  lively-" — a  discrim- 
inating, as  well  as  friendly,  sketch.  Eight  days  later, 
he  wrote  from  Downing  Street — from  Downing  Street 
at  last:  "The  Court  is  xevy  gracious;  I  was  with  the 
Prince  Consort  again  two  hours  on  Sunday  last."  The 
Court  w^as  very  gracious  out  of  policy — to  help  itself; 
it  was  to  end  by  being  very  gracious  out  of  its  heart, 
against  all  its  prepossessions,  and  because  it  could  not 
help  itself. 

The  Tory  part}'.  Peel  at  their  head,  was  in  enrlj 
conflict  with  the  young  Queen.  Hard  as  she  found 
it  to  part  from  Peel  and  Aberdeen  in  1846,  she  had 
found  it  harder  in  1839  to  say  good-by  to  Melbourne, 
and  to  send  first  for  Wellington  (who  declined  the 
task  of  forming  a  Tor}-  Government,  believing — like 
Mr.  Labouchere  later— its  leader  should  sit  with  the 
Commons)  and  then  for  Peel.  "She  observed  that  she 
had  parted  with  her  late  Government  with  great  re- 
gret," is  Peel's  dry  report.  Then  followed  the  episode 
that  goes  by  the  name  of  the  Bedchamber  Plot.  The 
Queen  and  Sir  Robert  do  not  wholly  agree  in  their 
versions  of  wliat  passed;  but  the  upshot  was  that  Sir 
Robert  refused  office  because  the  principal  posts  of 
the  Household  were  filled  by  friends  of  the  late  Ad- 
nnnistration,  who  would,  he  thought,  make  an  impres- 
sion on  the  Queen's  mind  hostile  to  the  successors  of 
their  sons,  nephews,  uncles,  and  brothers.  The  Queen 
stood  firm  against  "a   course  which,"  Sir  Robert   is 

505 


BEXJAMIX    DISRAELI 

told,  "she  conceives  to  be  contrary  to  usage  and  which 
is  repugnant  to  her  feelings."  After  reading  a  sharp 
criticism  in  a  lory  paper  upon  her  show  of  temper, 
she  said:  "The  Tories  do  all  in  their  power  to  make 
themselves  odious  to  me."  Yet  not  all  of  them.  The 
young  member  for  Shrewsbury,  though  not  yet  in  a 
position  to  criticize  his  leader's  attitude  publicly,  was 
inwardly  dissenting  from  it.  Writing,  six  years  later, 
in  Si/hil,  he  quotes  some  selfish  Tory  place-hunters 
about  the  folly  of  Peel's  refusal  of  power,  and  says: 
"Perhaps  it  may  be  allowed  to  the  impartial  pen 
that  traces  the  memoirs  of  our  times  to  agree,  though 
for  a  different  reason,  with  these  distinguished  fol- 
lowers of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  One  may  be  permitted  to 
think  that,  under  all  circumstances,  he  should  have 
taken  office  in  1839.  His  withdrawal  seems  to  have 
been  a  mistake.  In  the  great  heat  of  Parliamentary 
faction  which  had  prevailed  since  1831,  the  Royal  pre- 
rogative, which,  unfortunately  for  the  rights  and 
liberties  and  social  welfare  of  the  people,  had  since 
1688  been  more  or  less  suppressed,  had  waned  fainter 
and  fainter.  A  youthful  princess  on  the  throne, 
whose  appearance  touched  the  imagination,  and  to 
whom  her  people  were  generally  inclined  to  ascribe 
something  of  that  decision  of  character  which  be- 
comes those  born  to  command,  offered  a  favorable 
opportunity  to  restore  the  exercise  of  that  regal  au- 
thority, the  usurpation  of  whose  functions  has  en- 
tailed on  the  people  of  England  so  much  suffering 
and  so  much  degradation.  It  was  unfortunate  that 
one  who,  if  any,  should  have  occupied  the  proud  and 

500 


THE   QUEEN'S   FAVORITE   JNIINISTER 

national  position  of  the  loader  of  the  Tory  party,  the 
chief  of  the  people  and  the  champion  of  the  throne, 
should  have  commenced  his  career  as  Minister  under 
Victoria  by  an  unseemly  contrariety  to  the  personal 
wishes  of  the  Queen.  The  reaction  of  public  opinion, 
disgusted  with  years  of  Parliamentary  tumult  and  the 
incoherence  of  party  legislation,  the  balanced  state 
in  the  kingdom  of  political  parties  themselves,  the 
personal  character  of  the  Sovereign — these  were  all 
causes  which  intimated  that  a  movement  in  favor  of 
the  prerogative  was  at  hand.  The  leader  of  the  Tory 
party  should  have  vindicated  his  natural  position, 
and  availed  himself  of  the  gracious  occasion:  he 
missed  it;  and  as  the  occasion  was  inevitable,  the 
Whigs  enjoyed  its  occurrence.  And  thus  England 
witnessed  for  the  first  time  the  portentous  anomaly 
of  the  oligarchical  or  Venetian  party,  which  had  in 
the  old  days  destroyed  the  free  monarchy  of  England, 
retaining  power  merely  by  the  favor  of  the  Court." 

Peel,  however,  was  impenitent.  Looking  back  on 
the  episode,  he  confirmed  his  first  judgment:  "All 
that  has  passed  since  has  convinced  me  that  we  were 
right  in  refusing  to  accept  power  on  the  express  con- 
dition that  the  wives,  sisters,  and  daughters  of  our 
enemies  should  hold  the  chief  household  offices." 
When,  in  1840,  the  question  of  an  annual  allowance 
to  Prince  Albert  came  before  Parliament,  the  Whig 
Ministers  proposed  the  sum  of  £50,000,  whereas  Sir 
Robert  Peel  supported  the  amendment  to  lessen  the 
sum  to  £30,000,  and  carried  the  reduction  by  a  ma- 
jority of  104  votes.     "Tills  division,"  he  wrote,  "will 

507 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

inform  the  Queen  that  she  must  not  place  too  much 
reliance  on  the  forbearance  of  the  Conservative 
party."  Disraeli  voted  with  Peel;  but  against  the 
grain. 

With  the  Irish  Church  Disestablishment  resolu- 
tions in  1868  came  the  decisive  change  in  the  attitude 
of  the  Queen  toward  her  rival  Ministers,  Gladstone 
and  Disraeli.  "So  long  as  by  the  favor  of  the  Queen 
I  stand  here,"  was  one  of  the  allusions  made  in  Par- 
liament by  Disraeli  to  the  sympathy  of  his  Royal  mis- 
tress. In  vain  did  Bright  denounce  Disraeli  as  guilty 
of  treason  in  thus  "parading"  the  Queen's  partiality — 
a  partiality  men  did  not  yet  realize.  Again,  when  the 
title  of  Empress  was  conferred  upon  the  Queen  by  her 
Minister,  in  consonance  with  her  own  convictions  and 
with  the  long-formed  opinions  of  experts,  she  saw 
him  baited  day  after  day  with  an  extravagance  of 
prophecy  about  England's  downfall  in  the  East,  an 
extravagance  which  itself  was  evidence  of  the  down- 
fall of  England  in  the  foresight  of  her  captains. 
Again  there  was  talk  of  the  impeachment  of  Disraeli; 
and  the  very  elect  were  taken  by  the  popular  clamor. 
It  was  Disraeli  against  the  world;  and  Time  has  justi- 
fied Disraeli.  That  episode  was  the  beginning  of  the 
end  of  the  Queen's  confidence  in  Gladstone;  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  her  belief  in  his  rival  had  passed  into 
the  stage  of  faith. 

Various  versions,  ironic  and  farcical,  of  the  source 
and  mainstay  of  that  influence  of  the  Minister  over 
his  Ivoyal  mistress  have  been  hazarded;  some  vulgar, 
some  flippant,  some  offensive.     He  shook  hands  with 

508 


THE   QUEEN'S   IVVVOUITE    MIXISTER 

Johu  Browii;  the  Uighland  Jourual  was  entered  iu 
the  liojal  Confession  Book  as  his  favorite  reading; 
he  befoohnl  her  with  flattery — a  woman  hardened 
utterly  against  the  flatteries  of  courtiers.  Yet  if 
"flattery"  is  to  be  the  word  for  ''his  profound  and  ad- 
miring regard  for  women/'  we  accept  at  the  hand  of 
Lord  Esher,  then  Mr.  R.  B.  Brett,  the  otherwise  un- 
welcome word.  "Disraeli's  chivalrous  devotion  to 
women  is  abundantly  clear  from  his  novels/'  Mr.  Brett 
says;  "what  wonder,  then,  that  to  Disraeli,  a  romanti- 
cist in  statecraft,  an  idealist  in  politics,  and  a  Proven- 
^•al  in  sentiment,  his  chivalrous  regard  for  the  sex 
should  have  taken  a  deeper  complexion  when  the  per- 
sonage was  not  merely  a  woman,  but  a  Queen?  In 
trifles  Disraeli  never  forgot  the  sex  of  the  Sovereign. 
In  great  affairs  he  never  appeared  to  remember  it. 
To  this  extent  the  charge  of  flattery  brought  against 
him  may  be  true.  He  approached  the  Queen  with  the 
supreme  itact  of  a  man  of  the  world,  than  which  no 
form  of  flattery  is  more  subtle."  Disraeli,  in  short, 
took  the  Queen  as  he  found  her.  In  trifles,  she  tells 
us  somewhere,  she  felt  and  showed  herself  womanish ; 
in  serious  crises  she  was  calm.  In  talking  with  the 
Queen,  Disraeli — so  he  told  Mr.  Brett — had  a  simple 
rule:  "I  never  deny;  I  never  contradict;  I  sometimes 
forget" — a  rule,  one  may  say,  that  clamors  for  very 
general  application  among  the  civilized. 

But  it  was  not  by  any  special  show  of  "tact" — 
nearly  as  repulsive  a  thing,  if  self-conscious,  in  the 
social  world  as  Faber  found  self-conscious  "edifica- 
tion" to  be  in  the  spiritual — that  Disraeli  obtained 

509 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 

and  held  his  sway  over  the  preferences  of  his  Sover- 
eign. He  had  a  saving  sense  of  humor,  and  he  had 
for  his  foil  in  this  respect,  during  his  later  years,  a 
rival  who  had  none.  The  Queen  liked  to  be  amused, 
and  Disraeli's  flow  of  shrewd  comment  on  men  and 
matters  never  failed.  "No  one,  it  is  certain,"  says 
Lady  Ponsonby,  "ever  amused  her  so  much  as  he  did." 
The  Island  politician  is  b^-  common  consent  a  dull 
creation;  and  the  Queen  treated  him  dully.  The  bored 
person  is  apt  to  be  inconsiderate,  even  brutal;  so  that 
the  gouty  Minister,  afraid  to  possess  his  soul,  was 
made  to  stand  after  dinner  till  he  dropped — and  woe 
to  him  if  he  trenched  on  the  Royal  rug!  Mental 
lackej^s  may  very  well  be  treated  as  physical  lack- 
eys. Queen  Victoria  did  not  put  forth  the  formula; 
but  her  practise  was  such  when  she  permitted  to  Dis- 
raeli, and  to  Disraeli  alone,  "a  reckless  disregard  of 
Court  etiquette."  Lady  Ponsonby  illustrates  her 
point: 

"He  was  never  in  the  least  shy;  he  did  not  trouble 
to  insinuate;  he  said  what  he  meant  in  terms  the  most 
surprising,  the  most  unconventional;  and  the  Queen 
thought  that  she  had  never  in  her  life  seen  so  amusing 
a  person.  He  gratified  her  by  his  bold  assumptions 
of  her  knowledge,  she  excused  his  florid  adulation  on 
the  ground  that  it  was  'Oriental,'  and  she  was  pleased 
with  the  audacious  way  in  which  he  broke  through  the 
ice  that  surrounded  her.  He  would  ask  across  the 
dinner-table,  'Madam,  did  Lord  Melbourne  ever  tell 
your  Majesty  that  you  were  not  to  do  this  or  that?' 
and  the  Queen  would  take  it  as  the  best  of  jokes. 

510 


Phutugrapk  by  II.  11'.  Tuuul  it  CWf9l^^9^^^   Designed  hi/  Ricliurd  I. tit. 

MEMORIAT.  IN  HUGHENDEN  CHURCH. 

Erected  to  Iier  Favorite  Minir^ter  by  (^iieen  \'ictoria. 


TllK   QUEEN'S   FAVORITE   INIINISTKR 

Tho-se  wlio  were  present  at  diuuer  when  Di.sraeli  sud- 
denly proposed  the  Queen's  health  as  Empress  of  In- 
dia, with  a  little  speech  as  llowery  as  the  oration  oi"  a 
niaharajah,  used  to  describe  the  pretty  smiling  bow, 
half  a  courtesy-,  which  the  Queen  made  him  as  he  sat 
down.  She  loved  the  East,  with  all  its  pageantry  and 
all  its  trappings,  and  she  accepted  Disraeli  as  a  pic- 
turesque image  of  it.  It  is  still  remembered  how^ 
much  more  she  used  to  smile  in  conversation  with  him 
than  she  did  with  nnj  other  of  her  Ministers." 

The  Queen  did  not  keep  her  partiality  to  herself 
or  to  her  more  immediate  entoiircKje.  The  public  may 
be  said  to  have  been  taken  into  confidence  even 
rather  defiantly.  In  1868,  he  was  consoled  for  his 
defeat  at  the  polls  hj  the  Queen's  wish  to  give  him  a 
signal  mark  of  her  approbation,  and  Lady  Beacons- 
field  became  a  Viscountess.  His  own  earldom  came 
at  a  moment  of  equally  critical  contest;  and  when  her 
personal  presence  at  the  opening  of  Parliament,  or 
even  a  visit  to  Hughenden,  could  serve  his  interests, 
the  trouble  was  not  grudged  by  his  Royal  mistress. 
The  bunch  of  roses  she  sent  to  Downing  Street  to 
welcome  him  on  his  arrival  from  the  Berlin  Confer- 
ence was  a  pledge,  to  which  the  primrose  was 
too  soon  to  be  a  ghostly  successor.  At  the  first  news 
of  his  serious  illness  she  sent  to  offer  that  bedside 
visit  upon  M'hich  his  doctors  put  their  veto,  believing 
the  strain  and  emotion  of  such  an  interview  to  be 
beyond  his  flickering  powers.  Daily  messages  were 
supplemented  by  offers  of  delicacies,  some  of  which 
he  ate,  alas!  with  no  sauce  of  hunger. 

511 


BEXJAMIN    DISRAELI 

When  the  end  came,  her  own  hand  wrote  the 
oflacial  notice  for  the  Court  Circular:  'The  Queen  re- 
ceived this  morning,  with  feelings  of  the  deepest  sor- 
row, the  sad  intelligence  of  the  death  of  the  Earl  of 
Beaconsfield,  in  which  her  Majesty  lost  a  most  de- 
A^oted  friend  and  counselor,  and  the  nation  one  of  its 
most  distinguished  statesmen."  The  offer  of  a  public 
funeral  in  Westminster  Abbey,  made  at  once  to  the 
executors  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  was  of  her  instant 
prompting;  and  a  day  later,  the  Court  Circular  an- 
nounced that  Lord  Rowton — he  whose  peerage  was 
in  a  sense  a  link  between  the  Sovereign  and  the  dead 
Chief — had  arrived  at  Osborne  to  recount  "the  touch- 
ing details  of  the  last  hours  of  her  Majesty's  valued 
friend.  Lord  Beaconsfield."  At  the  graveside  at  the 
foot  of  the  green  hill  at  Hughenden  were  two  wreaths, 
distinguishable  from  all  the  rest — one  of  primroses, 
bearing  the  legend  "His  favorite  flower,"  in  the 
Queen's  handwriting;  and  another,  on  which  she 
wrote:  "A  mark  of  true  affection,  friendship,  and 
respect." 

The  unfinished  picture  by  Sir  John  Millais  the 
Queen  ordered  to  be  placed  in  the  Academy,  though 
sending-in  day  was  over;  and,  had  she  not  disliked  it, 
would  herself  have  become  its  possessor.  A  little 
later,  Victoria  made  a  pilgrimage  to  the  vault  at 
Hughenden,  which  was  reopened  for  her,  so  that  she 
might  lay  upon  the  unspeaking  coffin  with  her  own 
hand  ano'ther  wreath.  At  her  special  request,  on  that 
occasion  the  Queen  traveled  the  exact  route  taken  by 
Lord   Beaconsfield   when   last   he   had   passed   from. 

512 


THE   QUEENS   FAVORITE   INIINISTER 

Windsor  to  his  owu  Manor  house;  and  thence  she 
traced  to  the  grave  the  steps  of  those  who  had  carried 
his  coffin  over  that  descending  track.  From  her  own 
privy  purse  she  put  up  a  monument  to  her  Minister  in 
his  parish  church.  There  at  Hugheudeu,  under  the 
profile  portrait  in  marble,  appear  the  lines:  "To  the 
dear  and  honored  memory  of  Benjamin,  Earl  of  Bea- 
consfield,  this  memorial  is  placed  by  his  grateful 
Sovereign  and  friend,  Victoria  R.I.  ^Kings  love  him 
that  speaketh  right.' " 


THE     END. 


3-1 


513 


INDEX 


Aberdare,  Lord,  131. 

Aberdeen,  Lord,  98. 

Ainsworth,  64. 

Albany,  188. 

Albemarle,  Earl  of,   139. 

Albert,  Prince,  448,  449. 

Alderson,  Baron,  87. 

Alvanley,  Lord,  212,  213. 

Ashley,  Lord,  314. 

Austen,  Benjamin,  266. 

Austen,    Mrs.,   24,    175,    176,    182, 

183. 
Austin,  Charles,  268. 

Baillie,  Henry,  218. 
Balfour,  A.  J.,  154,  179,  390. 
Baring,  Sir  Thomas,  204,   395. 
Barrington,  Lord,  3,  20,   160,   162, 

164,  165,  171. 
Basevi,  George,  264,  342. 
Baum,  107. 
Beaconsfield,    Lady,    51,    62,     188, 

292,  384. 
Beaconsfield,  Lord.      See  Disraeli, 

Benjamin. 
Beaconsfield,  pronunciation  of,  113. 
Beckford,     William,     27      (note), 

212. 
Bedford,  Duke  of,  123. 
Bennet,  Lord,  142. 
Bennett,  Mr.,  219. 
Bentinck,    Lord    George,    30,    152, 

319. 
Berlin  Congress,  the,  152. 
Bismarck,  Prince,   107,  108. 
Blackheath,  4. 

Blackwood.  Mrs.,    133,   159,  290. 
Blagden,  Rev.  H.,  130. 


Blessington,  Lady,  188,  252;  let- 
ters to,  256. 

Blount,  Sir  Edward,  343. 

Blunt,   Wilfrid   Scawen,  v. 

Bradenham,  23,  250. 

Bradford,  Lady,  77. 

Bradford,  Lord,  20. 

Brett,  Hon.  Reginald,  154. 

Brewster,  Mr.,  424. 

Bridgewater,  Earl  of,  88. 

Bright,  John,  341,  355,  357. 

Brougham,  Lord,  72. 

Brown's  Life  of  Disraeli,  420. 

Browning,  Robert,  150. 

Bruce,  Dr.,  161. 

Bryce,  Mr.,  424. 

Buckingham,  Duke  of,  18. 

Buller,  Charles,  225    (note),  248. 

Bulwer,  E.  L.,  13,  18,  36,  41,  89, 
188,  201,  205,  251.  See  also 
Lytton. 

Bulwer-Lytton,  Lady,  150. 

Eurdett,  Sir  Francis,  37. 

Burke,  109. 

Burney,  Admiral,  12. 

Bury,  Lord,  139.  See  also  Albe- 
marle. 

Busk,  E.  J.,  9. 

Byron,  125,  126,  177,  381. 

Cadogan,  Lord,  20. 
Caillard,  Sir  Vincent,  264. 
Cairns,  Lord,  145,  160. 
Campbell,  Lord  Chancellor,  272. 
Campbell,  Tom,  26. 
Canterbury,  Lord.  330. 
Carlingford,  Lord,  249. 
Carlyle,   Thomas,   437,   440,  442. 


515 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 


Chamberlain,  Joseph,   135,  418. 
Chandos,  Lord,  37,  132,  302,  303. 
Chesterfield,  Lady,  20,  185. 
Childers,  Mr.,  424. 
Churchill,     Lord     Randolph,     85, 

453. 
Clay,  H.  E.,  97,  151. 
Clay,  James,  96,  97. 
Cochrane,  Baillie,  75,  84,  153.    See 

also  Laniington. 
Cogan's  school,  5. 
Colburn,  63. 
Coleridge,  143. 
Collard,  Mr.,  219. 
Collins,  62. 

Contarini  Fleming,  6,  25. 
Cooper,  Thomas,  63,  64,  65. 
Cowper,  Henry,   119,  127. 
Cross,  135. 

Cumberland,  Duke  of,  21. 
Cunningham,  Alan,  26. 

D'Arblay,  Madame,  12,  26. 

D'Esterre,  212. 

de   Fonblanque,  E.  B.,  67. 

de  Grey,  Lady,  300  (note). 

de  Grey,  Lord,  300. 

de  Montalembert,  Mdlle.,  29. 

de  Murrieta,  Madame  (Marquesa 
de  Santurce),  151. 

D'Orsay,  Count,  18,  188,  218,  251, 
255,  263. 

Derby,  Lady,  23. 

Derby,  Lord,  84,  453. 

Devonshire,  Duke  of,   140. 

Dilke,  Sir  C,  26,  138. 

Disraeli,  Benjamin:  birth,  3;  edu- 
cation, 4;  conversation,  13;  on 
dinners,  17;  on  smoking,  23; 
his  novel  Contarini  Fleming. 
25;  his  political  aspirations,  29 ; 
his  name,  32 ;  his  maiden  speech, 
35 ;  his  marriage,  50 ;  his  rac- 
ing experiences,  77 ;  his  views 
on  youth,  79;  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer,  86;  his  first 
acquaintance  with  Mrs.  Brydges 
Willyams,  88;  middle  age,  89; 
his     delicate     health,     90;     his 


nervousness,  92;  Church  pat- 
ronage, 99;  at  the  Berlin  Con- 
gress, 107;  the  Golden  Wreath, 
110;  on  men  and  books,  119; 
on  servants,  127 ;  on  Church 
matters,  128 ;  impressions  and 
portraits,  131  ff.;  his  favorite 
flower,  147;  habitations,  148; 
compliments,  149;  diversions, 
151;  his  last  illness,  160;  early 
travels,  175;  at  Geneva,  176; 
Milan  and  Venice,  177 ;  Flor- 
ence, 180;  ill  health,  182;  a 
friend  in  need,  183 ;  his  sister, 
184;  his  best  friend,  187;  his 
connection  with  the  Westmin- 
ster Reform  Club,  199;  his  first 
candidature,  204;  his  corre- 
spondence with  O'Connell,  214; 
his  letters  to  the  Times,  223 ; 
his  friendship  and  correspond- 
ence with  Lady  Blessington, 
252;  Carlton  Club  candidature, 
254;  his  uncle,  George  Basevi, 
264 ;  his  dislike  of  lawyers,  266 ; 
the  Queen  v.  Disraeli,  271;  his 
impecuniosity,  291 ;  the  Peel- 
Disraeli  correspondence,  294 ; 
his  novel  Sybil,  348;  proof-read- 
ing for  Hansard,  390 ;  his 
friendship  and  correspondence 
with  Mrs.  Brydges  Willyams, 
399 ;  his  coat  of  arms,  407 ; 
Church  and  State,  410;  his 
biographers,  416 ;  his  views  on 
literary  rewards,  425,  435 ;  his 
cosmopolitanism,  439 ;  his  opin- 
ion on  evolution,  440 ;  his  mag- 
nanimity, 454;  on  the  death  of 
his  wife,  461 ;  his  friendship  for 
the  Queen,  488 ;  and  hers  for 
him,  498 :  his  humor,  510. 

D'Israeli,  Isaac,  186. 

D'lsraeli  (Mrs.),  Mary  Anne.  See 
Beaconsfield,   Lady. 

Disraeli,  Ralph,  35,  84,  262. 

Disraeli,  Sarah,  4,  114,  184,  185, 
186.  187. 

Do^^^lman.  Dr.,  394,   395. 


I 


516 


INDEX 


Drummond,  Henry,  76. 
Dudley,  Lady,  20,'  150. 
Dunconibe,   J^ady   Harriet,    100. 
Duncoinbe,  Dean  Augustus,  100. 
Dunoombe,  T.  S.,  30,  62,  63. 
Durham,  Lord,  37,  212,  238. 

Ecclesiastical     appointments,    Dis- 
raeli's, 99. 
Eldon,  Lord,  134. 
Eliot,  Lord,  66. 
Escott,  Mr.,  424. 
Espinasse,  147. 
Evans,  John,  51. 
Evelyn,  John,  74,  75. 
Exeter,  393,  396. 

Faber,  Frederick,  72,  85. 

Fagan,  Louis,  201. 

Fector,  268. 

Ferrand,    Bousfield,    355. 

Foggo's  life  of  Disraeli,  420. 

Follett,  Sir  W.,  273  fi". 

Fonblanque,  188. 

Francis,  G.  H.,  248. 

Eraser,  Sir  William,  14,  121,  122, 

123,  127,  149,  424. 
French,  Fitzstephen,  213,  214. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  400. 
Froude's  life  of  Disraeli,  421. 


Galway,  Lord,  152. 
Gibson,  Milner,  92. 
Gladstone,    W.   E.,    140,    145, 

147,  152,  426,  449,  450. 
Globe,  the,  222  ff. 
Godcrich,  Lord,  300. 
Goethe,  27. 
Goldsmid,  Baron,  20. 
Gordon,  Sir  Charles,  98. 
Gore,  Charles,  29. 
Gore  House,  15. 
Gore,  Mrs.,  13,  188,  288. 
GortschakofT.    Prince,    107. 
Goschcn,  Lord,  453. 
Gower,   I>ord   Ronald,  53,  54, 

340. 
(Jraham,  Sir  James.  131,  132, 

3S3. 


146, 


135, 
315, 


Grammatical  errors,  161,  162. 
Granby,  Lord,  20.     See  also  Rut- 
land. 
Grant,  Sir  R.,  18. 
Granville,  Lord,  20,  47,   157. 
Green,  Henry,  9. 
Green,  Richard,  9. 
Greenwood,  Frederick,  424. 
Gregory,  Sir  William,  51,  52,  53. 
Greville,  30,  37. 
Grey,  Colonel,  117,  237. 
Grey,  Lord,  117. 
Gull,  Sir  William,  342. 
Gurney,  Rev.  Alfred,  11. 
Gurney,  Russell,  10. 

Halifax,  Lord,  387. 

Hall,  E.  P.,  32. 

Hamilton,  Lord  George,  xiii. 

Hanover,  King  of,  68. 

Hansard,  162,  390. 

Harcourt,    Sir    William,    53,    125, 

130,  137. 
Hare,  Julius,  70. 
Harris,  J.  H.,  293,  424. 
Harrison,  Frederic,  424. 
Harrington,   Lord,    139.      See   also 

Devonshire,  Duke  of. 
Hawes,  9. 
Hayward,  Abraham,  247,  248,  249, 

250,  308. 
Heaton,  Henniker,  69. 
Heine,  27. 

Hitchman's  life  of  Disraeli,  423. 
Hobhouse,  Sir  John,  242. 
Holme,  John,  101. 
Hope,  A.  J.  B.,  443,  455. 
Hope,  Henry,  74. 
Houghton,    Lord,    13    (note),    82. 
Howard,  Lady,   125. 
Hume,  Joseph,   36,   203,   206,   237, 

238,  386. 

Ingpen,  Roger,  xiv. 

JofTrey,  66. 
"  Jim  Crow,"  34. 
Jones,  p^dward,  4. 
Jowett,  Dr.,  123. 


517 


BENJAMIN    DISRAELI 


Kebbet's  life  of  Disraeli,  422. 
Keble,  83. 

Ker-Seymer,  H.  E.,  97. 
Kidd,  Dr.,  160,  171. 


Labouchere,  Henry ,  20  7 . 

Lamington,  Lady,  83,  151,  153. 

Langtry,  Mrs.,  250. 

Laslett,  293. 

Layard,  G.  S.,  387,  389. 

Layard,  Sir  Austen,  182. 

Layard,  Sir  Henry,  406. 

Leeper,  Rev.  H.  H.,  414. 

Leighton,  Lord,  20. 

Lennox,  William,  30. 

Leveson-Gower,  Mr.,  47. 

Lewis,  Mrs.  Wyndham,  13,  50.   See 

also  Beaconsfield,  Lady. 
Lincoln,  Lord,  28. 
Londonderry,  Lord,  285. 
Lonsdale,  Lady,  20. 
Lord,  Frewen,  424. 
Lot  hair,  457. 
Louise,  Princess,  144. 
Lovegrove,  293. 
Lovett,  62. 
Lygon,  Colonel,  49. 
Lyndhurst,  Lady,  287,  289. 
Lyndhurst,    Lord,    18,   29,   30,   37, 

251,  266,  303,  326. 
Lyttelton,  Lord,  69. 
Lytton,  Earl  of,  letter  to,  462. 

Macaire,  Robert,  22. 

Macaulay,  36. 

MacColl,  Canon,  146. 

Macknight's  life  of  Disraeli,  416. 

Maclise,  12. 

Macmurdo,  Gilbert,  90. 

Magee,  Bishop,  99. 

Mahon,  Lady,  185. 

Mahon,  Lord,  34. 

Maidstone  election,  the,  269. 

Malmesbury,  Lord,  22,  54. 

Manners,   Lord    John,    68,    82,    85, 

354,    383,    384,    446.      See    also 

Rutland. 
Manners-Sutton,  H.,   19. 


Manning,  Cardinal,   118,   141,   144, 

177,  455,  456,  459. 
Mary  of  Cambridge,  Princess,  141. 
Melbourne,  LoVd,  31. 
Meredith,  William,  175,  186. 
Metternich,  114. 
Meynell,  S.  T.,  xiv. 
Mill's  life  of  Disraeli,  420. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  358. 
Millais,  John,   153. 
Milman,  25. 
Monckton-Milnes.     See    Houghton, 

Lord. 
Montagu,  Lady  Mary  Wortley,  24. 
Montagu,  Lord  Robert,  137. 
Moore,  66,  67,  189. 
Morgan,  Lady,  247. 
Morley,  Lady,  21. 
Morning  Post,  letter  to  the,  268  ff. 
Mowbray,  Sir  John,  53. 
Moxon,  63. 
Mulgrave,  Lord,  189. 
^Murray,  John,   64    {note). 

Nevill,    Lady    Dorothy,    letter    to, 

461. 
Newman,  Cardinal,  75,  136. 
Northcote,  Sir  Stafford,   108. 
Northumberland,  Duke  of,  70. 
Norton,  Mrs.,   13,  31,  133,  290. 

O'Brien,  Smith,  37. 
O'Connell,  36,  205. 
O'Connell,  Morgan,  212. 
O'Connor,  Feargus,  348. 
O'Connor's  life  of  Disraeli,  418. 
Ormonde,  Lord,  178. 
Osborne,  Bernal,  51,  205,  397. 
Ossulston,  18. 

Paget,  9. 

Pakington,  Sir  John,  131. 

Palk,  Sir  Lawrence,  392,  396,  397. 

Palmerston,  Lord,  30,  89,  308. 

Parke,  Baron,  86,  87. 

Parker,  C.   S.,  296.  328. 

Parkinton,  G.  H.,  86. 

Patmore,  Coventry,   120. 

Peacock,  T.  L.,  307. 


518 


INDEX 


Peel,  Lord,  32. 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  40,  42,  43,  48,  72, 
83,  84,  95,  132,  204,  285,  500, 
507,  508 ;  correspondence  with 
Disraeli,  294,  340. 

Pigott,  Digby,  101,  102. 

Pigou,  Dean,  147. 

Piatt,  Baron,  87. 

Pollock,  Baron,  87. 

Pollock,  Sir  F.,  273. 

Pope-Hcnnessy,  Sir  John,  155. 

Portland,  Duke  of,  165. 

Potticary's  school,  4. 

Powerscourt,  18. 

Quain,  Sir  R.,  160. 

Reform  Club,  the,  200. 

Robinson,  H.  C,  16. 

Roebuck,  72,  141. 

Rolfe,  87. 

Rose,  Sir  Philip,  160. 

Rosslyn,  Lord,  144. 

Rothschild,  Alfred  de,  20. 

Rothschild,   Sir  Anthony,  20,  21. 

Rowton,  Lord,   109,   148',   160,   163, 

164,  165,  171. 
Russell,  Lord  John,  29,  36,  48,  62 

(note),   117,  242,  306. 
Russell,  Lord  Odo,  109. 
Rutland,  Duchess  of,  138,  157,  155. 
Rutland,    Duke    of,  21,   127.     See 

also  Manners. 
Ryle,   Bishop    (of   Liverpool),   99, 

102. 

St.  Germans,  Earl  of.  8cc  Eliot, 
Lord. 

St.  Maur,  Lady  (Duchess  of  Som- 
erset), 290. 

Saintsbury,  Prof.,  82. 

Salisbury,  Lord,  94,  95,  390,  415, 
453. 

Sandon,  Lord,  103,  105. 

Scott,  Montagu,  390. 

Sebright,  Lady,  149. 

Sellwrne,  Lord,  340. 

Seymour,  Lady  (Ducliess  of  Som- 
erset), 133. 

Shaftesbury,  Lord,  341. 


Sharpe,  Daniel,  9. 

Sharpe,  Samuel,  9. 

Sharpe,   Sutton,  9. 

Shee,  William  Archer,  IL 

Siieil,  41. 

Sheridan,  Mrs.,   159. 

Sichel,  Walter,  424. 

Sinclair,   Sir   George,   381;   letters 

to,  382,  385. 
Smith,  W.  H.,  135. 
Smiths,  Abel,  21. 
Smythe,  George,  51,  65,  68,  69,  70, 

71,  72,  73,  74,  75,  188.    8ee  also 

Strangford. 
Solly,  Samuel,  9. 
Somerset,  Grenville,  49. 
Somerset,  Duke  of,  159,  396. 
Spencer,  Lord,  20. 
Stafford,  Augustus,  83. 
Stanhope,  Lord.    See  Mahon,  Lord. 
Stanley,   Dean,   100. 
Stanley,     Lord,      134.      See     also 

Derby,  Lord. 
Stepftey,  Lady,   189. 
Stewart,    Mrs.    Duncan,    90,    92. 
Stirling-Maxwell,      Sir      William, 

249. 
Strangford,   Lord,    18,   65,   66,   6V, 

68,  69,  188.  See  also  Smythe,  G. 
Sutherland,  Duke  of,  20,  107. 
Swinburne,  A.   C.,    139. 
Sybil,  348,  381. 
Sykes,  Christopher,   152. 
Sykes,  James,  293    (note),  424. 

Talfourd's  Copyright  Bill,  48. 
Tauchnitz,  Baron,  416. 
Taylor,  Colonel,  22. 
Taylor,  H.  J.,  293    (note). 
Tennyson,  Lord,  425. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  20,  21. 
Thompson,   Colonel  P.,  32. 
Times,  letters  to  the,  223,  225,  236, 

244. 
Towle's  life  of  Disraeli,  422. 
Travers,  Benjamin,  9. 
Tremaine,  Bertie,  79. 
Turnerelli,  Tracy,  110-13. 
Turton,   Dr.,  393. 


519 


BENJAMIN   DISRAELI 


Victoria,    Queen,    162,    163,    488, 

489,  497,  498,  499,  501. 
Villiers,  Charles,  21,  188. 
Vincent,  87. 
Viney,  James,  51,  293. 


Walthamstow,  5. 

Webster,  Colonel,  23. 

Webster,  Daniel,  289. 

Weller,  Rev.  James,  xiv. 

Wellington,  the  Duke  of,  309,  333. 

Willes,  88. 

Willis,  N.  P.,  15. 


Willyams,  Mrs.   Brydges,  88,  399, 

402,  403. 
Wilton,  Lord,  152. 
Wing,  Mrs.,  265,  266. 
Wolcot,  393. 
Wood,  Sir  Charles.     See  Halifax, 

Lord. 
Wood,  Sir  Matthew,  200. 
Wycombe,  204. 
Wyndham,  Sir  William,  232. 

Yate,  Mrs.,  292. 

Zangwill,  Mr.,  424. 


(2) 


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